Magical Affinities
by Aegorm
Summary: After the Chamber of Secrets fiasco I realized I had more near death encounters than how many years I've lived, 13 and 12 respectively. Maybe this is Fate's way of saying I need to start studying so I can defend myself? I guess that might be a good idea actually. More advanced magic system, Ancient runes, Good!Dumbledore, no bashing.
1. Prologue: Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

 **My very first Fanfic, I've read a lot of stories on this site and I thought it was time to post something of myself.  
I think my writing style is decent enough, but I'm still developing it. I've chosen a 1st person perspective for this story simply because some of my favorite stories are written in 1st person mode. 'The Lie I've Lived' comes to mind.**

 **What always annoyed me about the Harry Potter series was that there were so many events that should have inspired Harry to learn at an accelerated level. First book, sure I can understand Harry doesn't take action after his first year in school. But after having to kill a Basilisk with a sword? Yeah, I would have either started studying my ass off to get stronger and defend myself or I would have ran away from the wizarding world with a suitcase filled with gold.**

 **Now this story is something that's been running through my mind for some time, I wanted a believable, advanced yet relatively easy to understand Magic system. Magical Affinities was my answer to this problem. I'll explain my motives for my different choices in an AN at the bottom of the story.**

 **Don't forget to review/follow/favorite or whatever you want :)**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.**

* * *

The first time I came off my high of pain-relieving potions after the entire Chamber of Secrest fiasco I almost cried my eyes out.

Seriously, this was the 8th or was that the 9th time I almost died? Hold that thought, I need to count this out real quick.  
Voldemort at age 1, Fluffy, troll, 1st quidditch game, Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest, Fluffy, Devil's Snare, logic puzzle with decent chance on poisoning, Quirrelmort, Whomping Willow, Acromantulas, Lockhart with a wand and a direct confrontation with a 60 foot long Basilisk ends the list.  
That's thirteen times I almost died! That's the more then my bloody age!

And want to know the sad thing? I never knew a single spell that could help me, not a single time.  
As Ron puts it, am I a wizard or not? Hermione used that flame spell on the Devil's snare, Ron used the levitation charm to knock out the troll. But me? I jumped on a troll's back and stuck my wand in its nose, I went ahead and brawled against a fully grown wizard who still had his wand and I fought a Basilisk with a sword.

It was at this moment that I realized I had to learn how to defend myself, because let's be honest here, I am a pathetic excuse for a wizard.

So that's the reason why I'm on my way to the library right now. I need a summer project, something to study during my 2 month break. Something I can use to become stronger so that I can actually use magic to protect myself.

The library of Hogwarts is truly a thing of beauty, thousands upon thousands of books filled with magical knowledge. I never understood why Hermione loves this place so much, but now I can see it.

First things first, my electives for next year, Care of Magical Creatures is a given, I've faced a dangerous magical beast multiple times a year so far.

Now Ron wants me to pick Divination for an easy O.W.L. but then again, McGonagall swears the course is useless. Muggle Studies is useless for me, so that leaves Arthrimacy and Ancient Runes. Time to do some research!

It turns out that doing research is a whole lot easier than I expected, Madam Pince may be a bitch but she keeps the library in perfect condition.  
Not all that much later I'm looking at 2 books, _"A Comprehensive Introduction to Ancient Runes"_ and _"Arthrimacy: A spell creator's basis"_.

...  
 _Ancient Runes is the study of the script of old magical languages and just like Latin these languages hold great power. In this branch of magic the saying "the pen is mightier than the sword" is true. Every single rune holds great power that often greatly exceeds Latin spells._

 _The runes you will learn in this branch of magic can be used for a variety of things, the most known use is warding. But for the truly talented this is just the beginning, if you have an affinity for Runes and a sufficiently large magical core you can write these runes in the air and use their effect directly like normal spells.  
_...  
Ancient Runes looks like it might be worth looking into, I don't know much about wards, but I do know they are used to defend a location. But the bit about affinities has me puzzled, I know my wand is good for Defensive magic. Is that an affinity? Damn, now I want to know what affinities are. But I guess I should look at _"Arthrimacy: A spell creator's basis"_ first.

...

 _Arthrimacy is the usage of numbers to explain magical phenomena, each and every spell has its origin in a Arthrimacy formula. The wand movement and power are defined by the use of Arthrimacy._

 _This is done by advanced mathematics, for example the formula for the Lumos spell :  
_...

Oh hell no, I left math back with my muggle life, I am not going to do advanced mathematics in Hogwarts. Well, that solves that problem, Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes it is.  
Now to look for a book on affinities.

* * *

As it turns out there isn't a single book on affinities in the Hogwarts library, well at least not in the normal section. So naturally I immediately took out my invisibility cloak and headed into the restricted area. Seriously, they need to get some better security for that door.

The restricted area is a figurative gold mine, only a couple of minutes after I started searching I found _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ by Brian W. Percival.

...  
 _An affinity in its most basic form is a branch of magic in which a wizard excels. More often than not this is confused with the strength of a wand, so if a wand which excels at Transfigurations and Charms chooses a wizard this wizard will have an affinity in both Transfiguration and Charms.  
This isn't correct, a wand chooses a wizard for a variety of reasons and even I don't know all of them, however I do know that it has nothing to do with affinities. _

_Affinities aren't limited to wand magics like Transfiguration, curses, hexes and charms.  
Potions, Alchemy, Spell-Creation, Rituals and numerous other magics can be affinities as well. Now you are probably wondering what it means to have an affinity, what effect will the affinity have on your magic? The answer to this is simple, you won't have a ceiling on your skill involving these magics. As long as you practice and study you will be able to keep growing in your respective affinities where others will hit a so called 'cap'._

 _A prime example of this is Nicholas Flamel with his Philosopher's Stone. If I were to do the exact steps for the creation of the stone, written by mister Flamel himself I would only get an inferior copy. And I have a minor affinity for Alchemy myself. Mr. Flamel's innate magic is so strongly attuned to Alchemy that his magic will come to his aid subconsciously to complete his work. The same is true for every other possible affinity, you will use less power for the same result, your work will show more details, your spells will be more powerful and so on._

 _Other affinities include but are not limited to: Elemental spells, Raw magic manipulation, Dark Curses, Illusions, Magic Reinforcement, Speed-Casting and Enchanting.  
_...

So as it turns out affinities are basically amazing, this Brian guy really knows how to explain something. Now all that's left is to find out my affinities and I have my summer project. The problem is that affinities seem to have fallen out of grace 200 years ago in favour of a more widespread education. So figuring out my affinity might be harder than I thought. According to Brian you can only find out your affinities in Gringotts or by the use of an expensive gadget these days. Getting to Gringotts won't be easy during my summer, and the gadget seems to be rather rare.

I'm rather pissed that I can't take this book with me, it's so helpful! But the charms on the books in the restricted section prevent me from taking them out of the area without the permission of Madam Pince. I guess I should go talk to a professor and see if they can help me out with my affinity but which one will help me? Dumbledore seems like the best choice but then again, he's the headmaster and most likely busy. On the other hand I still know the password of his office, and he did say his door is always open for me. Ah well, you snooze you lose, Dumbledore it is.

* * *

I will admit that I am rather stressed at the moment, walking up that spiralling staircase to see the greatest wizard in the last 100 years can do that to a person. Yes I know I see him daily, but still, this is in his office, and I _always_ feel like I'm in trouble when I'm in there. All the portraits, a mythical phoenix and a sentient hat staring at you make you really stressed out! And that's without the Headmaster sitting across of you.

Okay, relax, exhale deeply and knock on th "Come in Harry" Bloody hell, how does he do that.  
I open the door and go in, and every single portrait starts looking straight at me! Merlin, that's annoying.

"Well, hello Harry, what can I do for you?" The old man says to me.

"Sir, I was wondering if I could ask you something?"

"You just did Harry" He chuckles  
Okay, even I saw that one coming. Now for the big question.

"I've been reading a bit about different kinds of magic to defend myself with, since I seem to attract danger and I read something about affinities. I was wondering if you could help me figure out what affinities I have" Okay, perfect, tilt my head down and look up with my puppy-eyes, that should do the trick!

He chuckles, again! "Ah, I wondered what set of the Restricted Section's alarm this time." Oh, I guess that explains the chuckle. "Well, you are in luck Harry, I am one of the few wizards who still own a M.A.T." My facial expression must have betrayed my confusion because he immediately explained. "M.A.T. stands for Magical Affinity Tester, it identifies your affinities with the help of a blood test and a frequency scan of your magical core" He hands me a silver dagger, a bowl and a _joystick_? Why would I need a joystick? Again the confusion must have been coming off me in waves. "Make a cut on your palm and let the blood flow into the bowl, 5 drops will do. Once you've done that grasp the antenna with both your hand and relax, the machine will drag out a sample of your magic"

Having your magic sucked out of you is a weird feeling, I can't really describe it, but I'd rather not have that happen again. Immediately after I release the antenna, the blood in the bowl begins to shine brightly. Once the glow dies down there is a piece of parchment at the bottom of the bowl, the headmaster picks it up and his eyebrows rise at least half an inch. That might not seem that spectacular, but compared to his usual controlled facial expressions it's a big reaction.

"Euhm, sir? What are the results?" He's been looking at that piece of paper for over a minute now, I'm getting anxious over here!

"See for yourself Harry, you have some rare affinities, it is rather impressive"

 _M.A.T. 1.67.1_

 _Harry James Potter_

 _Magical Affinities:_

 _-Raw Magic Manipulation_

 _-Runes_

 _-Elemental spells: Lightning_

 _Magical Strength- Emrys scale:_

 _142 - Upper Wizard Class_

"As you can see, you have some rather rare affinities. By itself your Runes affinity is common but if you combine it with your rather high magical power you will gain access to runic spells in a couple of years, which is a valuable skill for both Duellists and Warders. Elemental affinities are a step above the normal affinities, your lightning based spells will gain a boost but more importantly you will be able to do minor wandless feats off this magic branch.

"Raw Magic Manipulation on the other hand is one of the rarest affinities. Speed-casting is considered just as rare, and only a high Alchemy affinity is rarer.  
Now, Raw Magic Manipulation allows for a number of feats all of which are done without a wand. You can manipulate your magic to take corporal form, be it a shield, an orb which you launch at your foes or a simple mass banisher."

Oh, this is amazing, never again will I be forced to put my wand in a Troll's nose, never again will I be forced to dive in a basilisk's mouth to try and kill it. But answers never come without questions, because what in the world is the Emrys scale?

* * *

Dumbledore is a good guy, instead of giving me detention for breaking into the Restricted area (again), he gave me _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ and _"The Emrys scale: Magical Might Explained"_. For some reason he found it incredibly amusing that I praised Brian W. Percival so much, I guess he's an old acquaintance of the headmaster.

 _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ has a chapter dedicated to each affinity and how to train them and apparently wandless magic can't be traced by the ministry so I can practice my RMM as much as I want! And of course the wandless aspect of my lightning affinity.

The Emrys scale really explains a lot of oddities about the magical community, why start school at the age of eleven? It seems such a random number, as it turns out 11 is the average age at which the magical core of a witch or wizard stabilizes enough to be used with some manner of control, before that point a wand will simply explode or catch fire because of the uncontrolled magic.

From the age 11 to 15 a wizard goes through a slow magical growth during which the magical core increases by roughly 100%. So the O.W.L's happen right after this growth. Before the age of 15 a lot of wizards simply don't have the strength to complete their practical O.W.L's.

From the age 15 to 17 wizards hit their magical growth spurt, and their core increases with 150% till 200%, so you can take your N.E.W.T's at your magical peak and find a job which suits your potential.  
The classes are the following:

0 = Muggle

1-10= Squib

11-50= Adept: This class is what most 1st years belong to, you can use spells but don't expect to pass your N.E.W.T's. Most wizards grow out of this stage around their 16th birthday, halfway through their growth spurt.

51-150= Wizard/Witch: The average wizard will be somewhere in this class, N.E.W.T.'s are passable.

151-250= Sorcerer: A minimum requirement for Curse-Breakers and Warders, high ranking Aurors sit in this class as well.

251-500= Warlock: The best and strongest Aurors, Curse-Breakers and warders will often belong in this category, they have the raw power to put down most criminals and break down a lot of curses compared to the normal wizard and wards build by a Warlock won't be taken down on a whim.

500-750= Mage: You don't fuck with Mages, yes a capital M, there have only been 2 mages in Britain in the last 100 years, care to guess who? Yep, Dumbledore and Voldemort are both mages with 624 and 687 respectively. Grindewald was also a Mage, scoring a respectable 552. But he never came to Britain. Nicholas Flamel also belongs to this category with a score of 529.

750-999= Arch-Mage: There has never been more than one Arch-Mage alive at the same time, right now the only living Arch-Mage is somewhere in the jungle of Brazil. Luckily enough he isn't a Dark Lord.

1000= Myrddin Emrys, or as we know him today, Merlin.

I must say, today has been more productive for my education then the last 2 years combined. I know which jobs I have enough magical strength for, looks like I'll be at least a warlock. I figured out which elective classes I'm going to take and I got a book to train my affinities with.

Now all I have to do is withstand Hermione's questions and Ron's moaning about Divination. Sweet Merlin, this is going to take a while. Or I just hide _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ and _"The Emrys scale: Magical Might Explained"_ , because otherwise I'll lose my books before the summer even begins.

So far it looks like I might have an enjoyable summer this year, it's not like anything can go wrong, right?

* * *

 **An: So, Magical Affinities. I rather enjoy this concept, it isn't like some fics where only Harry gets insane skills, like parselmagic, or multi Animagi or shadow magic or whatever else you use to overpower Harry.**

 **I enjoy those fics, I really do, but after a while all those stories blur together.**

 **In this story Harry doesn't have more power than Voldemort, he probably never will. He'll reach a 650 or something like that on the Emrys scale, I haven't decided yet. His affinity isn't the rarest or the most powerfull, no Speed-Casting ( both Flitwick and Voldemort will have this) is just as rare. Alchemy is even rarer.**

 **Now please note I never said something about strength, an affinity for Dark Magic might be more common then an elemental affinity but they are not comparable in strength. Each branch of magic has its own strengths and weaknesses, and even I haven't decided on the strength of each affinity compared to the others.**

 **Only Alchemy stands above the others, you probably wonder why though. Turning metal into Gold isn't strong, just extremely convenient, the same with the Elixer of Life.  
But Alchemy is so much more then just that, it is an overpowered version of transfiguration and the Philosopher's Stone is the best Magical Focus in the world, the Elder Wand will simply be a wand that is good at every branch of magic. **

**I will expand upon this in future chapters, but if you have questions, suggestions, compliments or criticism please review and let me know.**

 **If you have criticism, please try to word it so I can learn from my mistake, if you hate it, tell me why and tell me what I can improve :)**


	2. The Summer of 2013

**AN: 2 reviews, 14 favorites, 24 follows and 152 visitors in a day for my very first fanfic? I'm happy :) Thanks for following/favoriting/reviewing or just reading the story.**

 **7000 words, damn that's alot. I manage to cover the entire summer, Runic Magic, Raw Magic and some if not all of the things that annoyed me about Prisoner of Azkaban. That book was in my opinion based off one big plothole.**

 **Harry having access to his affinities changes a whole lot. I am rather afraid I changed too much, too quickly but the story is only really going to take off in 4th year so I think it's acceptable.**

 **Now, Runic magic, I am rather proud about it to be honest, I use a variation of the young Futhark script. It is actually a small variant of the script used in Runemark by Joanne Harris. If you want to find out how the runes look search runemarks wikia runes, the third link is the one you want to click.**

 **I think I explained it rather well, but if you have question or suggestions on how to better show what different runes do please leave a review or PM me. I do prefer reviews though, they look beautifull in my manage story section.**

 **Now to answer the questions that I received:**

 **-Harry's Emrys scale Vs Voldemort's: I am not sure yet what I'm going to do with this, I might just make Harry and Voldemort have the exact same Emrys scale. That will make the line 'And He will mark him as his equal' literally true.**

 **-Romance, since this is my first story I'm kinda worried about writing romance, simply because it is bloody difficult in my opinion, but worried or not I will have pairings in this story.  
Harry/Ginny and Harry/Hermione are both out for a variety of reasons, if you really want to know, ask me in a pm or review and I'll tell you.  
The pairing will be someone from a different house, Susan Bones, Daphne Greengrass, Tracey Davis, Lisa Turpin or perhaps Fleur Delacour. I am honestly not sure yet, but I do want an Inter-house relationship simply because the story is about pureblood fanatics targeting specific groups of people and the fight against them through the means of unity and teamwork. So I want to continue with that theme.**

 **-Magical affinities for other people?: Yes, everyone has affinities, it's just that some people haven't had them tested yet, but some definitely get them tested and will train in them.**

 **I'll probably put the use of every rune in the bottom AN when runes are used in a chapter so that you beautifull readers have a reference guide. That's enough from me, let's start the story**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling and some other people do  
** **I don't own Runemarks from Joanne Harris, I just use a variation of her runic script.**

* * *

Ron took it surprisingly well, he only moaned for about a minute but after I told him my reasons he actually agreed with me! He's still going to take Divination but at least he understands.

Hermione is another thing entirely, I thought I would give her the benefit of the doubt and show her what I'm going to work on. Oh boy, that was a bad idea, first she was happy I'm finally taking my education seriously then began the inquisition. "Why aren't affinities covered in the curriculum?" "Why haven't I heard from the Emrys index?" and of course "Can I borrow those books?".

She didn't get her claws in them yet, thank Merlin, but she somehow made me promise to lend them to her at the beginning of our next school year. Healthy set of lungs on that girl, asked at least 10 questions without coming up for air once!

Right now I'm in my bed with _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ in my lap, I will repeat it once more, this book is awesome, every affinity has a chapter dedicated to it.  
There is basic information about the affinity like rarity, usage and famous wizards with said affinity, besides that the books also mentions how you actually train your affinity!

Did you know that the Greek god Zeus was simply a wizard with an extremely high lightning affinity?  
Or how about the Egyptian tombs? Those were warded by wizards with a Runes affinity, those wards still stand to this day!  
And Raw Magic Manipulation's most famous user is Morgan Le Fay! She might not be Merlin, but that's as close is it can get!

I can't really practice my Runes and Lightning affinity yet, my Runes affinity is mostly theoretical in the beginning since I need to have a good grasp on all the different runes first.  
To develop my Lightning affinity, I first need to get used to casting lightning magic. I might have an affinity for Lightning but that doesn't mean I can simply go out and shoot lightning at people. That would have been amazing, but alas it isn't to be.

Raw Magic Manipulation on the other hand is easier to get started on, I don't need to know anything to start training this affinity. All I have to do is meditate and connect with my magical core.  
My affinity to Raw Magic should allow me to easily pull out a strand of magic and guide it towards my hands.

... Merlin's balls, Ron is snoring, how am I supposed to meditate with that noise! Oh great, why don't you join him Neville. Traitor! Silencing charm it is.

* * *

It seems that pulling out the strand of Raw Magic was indeed rather easy, getting to my magical core on the other hand? Not so much. Meditation is hard enough, but actually getting to your core is even harder. On the bright side this allows me to me more in touch with my magic, instead of just feeling my magic when I cast a spell, I can now feel my core softly pulsing within me at all times. It's truly a wonderful feeling.

The downside to all this? The last week of school is over and all I've been able to do is make a small orb of magic appear in the palm of my hand. It certainly looks cool, imagine a dark purple orb with white arcs of magic jumping out of it. It is absolutely useless as anything but a flashlight though.

I had actually hoped that I would be able to throw the orb by now, it wouldn't do any lasting damage but at least I could have scared my Uncle enough to let me keep my school stuff this year.

At the moment I'm trying to drown out the noise of Dudley whining about having to share the backseat with me. This is the worst part of the summer, being stuck in a confined space with all three Dursleys without any chance to escape. The conversation in the car is simply amazing, apparently Dudley hit someone with his Smelting stick yesterday. Oh I'm so tempted to say I killed a 60 foot long basilisk with a sword, just so I can see the reactions.

Ah we're home, well I guess it isn't really my home, more like the place I have to live while away from school. I'm fairly sure that isn't normal for a teenager.

"Boy, Marge is going to stay with us for the first week of August, so no funny-business, you hear me?" Oh great, big fat lump number 3 is coming over, I swear to Merlin if she brings that dog again I'll shove an orb .. of ... magic, hang on a second, this can work. I should have enough control to throw an orb of Raw Magic in a week, that should be enough of a scare to get my books and force Vernon to keep Marge on a leash. I'm hilarious, leash, ha!  
Wait, why is Uncle Vernon turning purple? I still have to answer him, riiiight.

"Yes Uncle Vernon, I won't do any freakishness Uncle Vernon." Not until I can blast you through the room that is.

* * *

Some people might say I'm a vindictive bastard, but Merlin, the Dursley's faces are worth so much right now. I'm standing here, in front of my old cupboard, but the door is completely cracked and the lock got blasted out.

Uncle Vernon is the most interesting shade of purple I've seen in ages, Dudley is holding his fat behind while whimpering about a pigtail, I have to remember to thank Hagrid for that.  
Aunt Petunia simply went white and is shaking like a leaf.

It's only been 6 days since I arrived at Privet Drive 4 and I managed to throw my Raw Magic orb 2 days ago, but now it actually has some power in it!

"As you can see there hasn't been an owl yet, that means that I won't get in trouble for doing magic." The simultaneous flinch is pure gold. "This means there will be some changes in this house, I don't want much. All I want are my books and 3 good meals a day. You stay out of my way, and I'll stay out of yours. And keep Marge on her leash" I snicker, it's still funny! The Dursleys don't seem to get my joke. "Leash, like one of her ugly dogs? oh cmon it was funny!"

Okay, what is that? Oh, oh, they seem to be forcing themselves to laugh. I guess I really scared them? That laughter is soulless, it is creeping me out, let's just take my suitcase and get back to my room.

* * *

I can finally start on the next step of Raw Magic Manipulation, it's been 3 weeks since I arrived at Privet Drive 4. I can form an orb that's about as big as my fist within less than a second and it absolutely destroys my water bottle targets. Not much has happened in the last 2 weeks, although Vernon got pushed to his limits when Ron telephoned to our house phone. I'm beginning to love that shade of purple, you can't find it anywhere else in the world, magical or muggle.

I've also been reading up on Ancient Runes, there are so many different runic scripts, it's unreal, so far I prefer Futhark, an old Norse script. I really need to get to Diagon Alley soon, I want to pick up my books for next school year and I really want a Rune-Etching set, normally you don't start etching and activating runes till 5th year. It has something to do with Runes being too draining before that point.

But I got power in spades so I technically could start with them already, only problem would be powering the runes. This is normally done with a wand, hold the wand on the runic array and start pumping in magic but I think this might be doable with Raw Magic.

Right, I'm getting off track, next step in Raw Magic Manipulation, let's see what Brian has to say about it.

...

 _Raw Magic Manipulation is manipulation to the highest level, a Raw Magic Manipulator is only limited by 3 things. Experience, magical core strength and imagination._

 _Shields, beams, swords or bullets as the Muggles call it, everything is possible. I've once seen a Raw Magic Manipulator deflect spells with a hand covered in Raw Magic before he expanded that Raw Magic in the direction of his enemies. This had the effect of a mass banisher, everything in front of him went flying back._

 _The only advice I can give a Raw Magic Manipulator is to practice your control by making different shapes with your Raw Magic. Start simple with cubes, cylinders, cones and pyramids, work your way up with small weapons, or multiple shapes at the same time. Eventually you can start forming bigger constructs with more detail. Control is key_

...

I'm almost drooling over _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ , the things I'll be able to do simply sound amazing. But I still need to get to Diagon Alley, owl-order won't do it since I only have a couple of sickles left, I do have some muggle money in my trunk, I guess I could take a bus to London? I'll think about it tomorrow, time to practice my control.

* * *

Etching runes is surprisingly relaxing, I don't think the Dursleys will appreciate that I'm carving them in the doorpost of my room, but it's not like they'll ever find out. My book on runes is on the floor besides me, I'm looking at the Futhark runes again. How did I get a Rune-Etching set? I didn't actually, I'm using Raw Magic to carve out the runes, it's crude and the results are sub-par compared to a proper Rune-Etching set, but it'll do for now.

...

 _There are 16 runes in the Futhark script, each rune has multiple meanings and can be used in different situations. Each rune besides Isa can be mirrored, mirroring a rune will do the opposite of what a normal rune does. Mirroring runes is also the easiest way to break a ward, if every rune in an array is mirrored it will shatter if the mirrored array has equal or more magical power._ _Isa can't be mirrored since the rune is a simple vertical stripe._

 _Fé: Riches, wealth, succes, discord ... Mirror: Harmony, Poverty_

 _Thuris: Lightning, thorns, pain_ _..._ _Mirror: Relief, painless_

 _Raedo: Travelling, riding, luck on the road_ _..._ _Mirror: Village, paralyze, bad travelling luck_

 _Hagall: Destruction, explosive ... Mirror: Repairs_

 _Isa: Ice, cold, hail, winter ... Mirror:/./././_

 _Ýr: Protection, Guardian ... Mirror: Broken protection, alone_

 _Týr: Warrior, sharpness, accuracy, sword, war ... Mirror: Dull, miss, Peace _

_Madr: Humanity, Muggles, the Earth ... Mirror: Animals_

 _Ór: Strength, power, unmovable ... Mirror: Weakness, tiredness_

 _Ós: Wizards, Magic, ... Mirror: Magical Creatures_

 _Kaen: Fire, Chaos, illusions, ... Mirror: Dispel illusions, extinguish fire _

_Naudr: Death, closure, need, constraint ... Mirror: Open, beginning_

 _Ár: Health, overflowing, spring, crop, harvest ... Mirror: Famine, sickness _

_Sól: Sun, summer, songs ... Mirror: Silence, moon_

 _Bjarkán: Sight, vision, future, dream ... Mirror: Blindness, past_

 _Logr: Water, ocean, sea ... Mirror: Drought, desert, dry_

...

I'm trying to make my room soundproof and make a lock for the door. Locking the door is fairly easy, it only requires 1 rune, Naudr. Simply etching it near the lock should do the trick, opening the door after it's closed requires another Naudr, but this time mirrored. So if I link both Naudr runes to the door I can chose when the door opens or closes. I won't be locked up ever again.

The soundproof part is a bit more difficult, I could simply do a mirrored Sól, but that would cancel all sound in the room. I want to have protection against sound, which means I will need to make a small runic array. A runic array is a combination of runes to create one effect, my 2 Naudr runes aren't an array since they each have an effect, unlocking and locking.  
Ýr stands for protection, so if I combine Sól and Ýr I should get the effect I'm looking for.

And I'm done, my 2 Naudr runes are connected to my door, on both sides, and I got my Sól/Ýr array on my door, and every wall that connects with a part of the house. My room is almost completely soundproof. The only sound comes from the window, which I can also mute whenever I want.

* * *

31st of July 1993, 1:25 a.m. and it's already my best birthday ever. It's not like it has much competition but still, I'm happy, I got some nice presents. A sneakoscope from Ron, an awesome Broomservice kit from Hermione and a biting book from Hagrid. Now you might be wondering why I'm happy I received a biting book, isn't it obvious? Imagine that book fighting against Marge's dog Ripper, I would pay to see that! And I just got a letter that we can visit Hogsmeade this year, and it's not like my Uncle isn't going to give me permission.

My good mood quickly evaporated, as I arrived in the kitchen I heard that Aunt Marge is coming a day early, which means that she's going to arrive today.

"Uncle Vernon, you do realize what day it is today, right?"

"Of course I do, it's a day before Marge would normally arrive, which means it's the 31st of July" Aunt Petunia realized what I'm talking about, she just went a couple shades paler.

"And isn't there something special about today, Uncle? Like, I don't know, a birthday?" Give him a cookie, he figured it out.  
It would be hard not to notice that I'm absolutely livid, a side effect of being a novice in Raw Magic Manipulation is that I simply don't have enough control to reign in my Raw Magic when my emotions run wild. So right now my hand are glowing an ominous dark purple and there are white arcs of magic jumping around my arms, I guess you could compare them to lightning. In the back of my mind I wonder if it has something to do with my Lightning affinity.

"Now Harry, don't be hasty, Vernon will make sure Marge behaves, and, and we'll get you a present!" Okay the world has gone crazy, Aunt Petunia is going to get me a real present for my birthday. Hang on! Merlin! Uncle Vernon is almost as purple as my Raw Magic, perhaps he's a Squib with a suppressed Raw Magic Manipulation affinity? Who knows.

"Keep Marge out of my way and don't let her insult my parents, if you want to buy me a present I would appreciate some clothes that actually fit me. A t-shirt, jeans, shoes and jacket would be nice, they don't have to be expensive, I just want them to fit."

* * *

Aunt Petunia actually took me shopping that day, I must admit it feels good to have some proper clothes. I'm now the proud owner of a simple white t-shirt, a faded blue jeans, dark blue all-stars and a black leather jacket. I bought the jacket myself since that was a bit too expensive, I would feel bad if I forced Aunt Petunia to spend that much money on me. I'm really too nice.

I'm already 6 days into the torture week, 8 days, whatever and so far Vernon really did a great job, he managed to keep Marge's attention off me and on a variety of useless things like his job, Dudley, her dog and so on. Speaking of her dog, Ripper, the match between the Monstrous book of monsters and the annoying pit-bull was an event to remember. I managed to lure Ripper into my room, where the book was waiting, and activated my Naudr lock and the soundproof array. I quickly jumped on my desk and watched the show.

Ripper got ripped a new one! Okay, I admit, that was a lame pun. But still! Ripper got demolished, he still flinches every time he walks past a book. Bloody brilliant that is!

At the moment Marge is annoying me, not just annoying me but really just trying to piss me off, Uncle Vernon is trying to redirect the conversation to safer waters but Marge is having none of that. Wine + Marge + me = rapidly degenerating situation, I have to keep my hand under the table because I'm sure they are already starting to glow.

"I've heard of your father! He was a good for nothing drunk, worthless scum that profited from good families like your Uncle's! And don't get me started on your worthless whore of a mother, she was"

Everyone has a breaking point, and mine is lower than normal with my Raw Magic Manipulation training. It seems that calling my parents worthless good for nothing drunks for an hour on end pushes me over it.

"You know nothing!" I hissed "My parents were heroes of the light, some of the strongest people you will ever hear of!" I try to keep my Raw Magic under control, I manage but just barely. I'm fairly sure you can still see a small glow around my hands, but I hope it isn't noticeable.

"Uncle Vernon, I'm leaving, you still have to sign something for my school and then I'm out of your hair for this summer"

I walk out of the room as quick as I can, Marge has already recovered from my outburst and is insulting my parents, again! I need to get out of here before I lose control, showing the Dursleys my Raw Magic is allowed since they are aware of magic. But Marge isn't so I can't let loose with her around.

I quickly open my door by pumping Raw Magic into the mirrored Naudr rune, I'm still happy that I discovered I can power runes with Raw Magic. I gather my books, my wand, my nimbus 2000, broom service kit and my clothes in my trunk. I quickly get out of Dudley's second hand clothes and put on my new outfit. I wasn't supposed to wear my nice clothes because Marge has to think I go to that criminal school. Compromises, they are necessary even if I don't like them.  
Hedwig is still hunting, but she'll find me, she always does.

My trunk is fairly heavy, it won't be easy to actually travel with this thing. There has to be some way to make this easier! Right, runes, of course! Let's see, a Raedo on the handle and main body of the trunk should make it easy to travel with.

And that's that! The handle is comfortable to use and my trunk is as light as a feather! Brilliant! Now to get Vernon to sign my permission slip for Hogsmeade and I'm out of here.

"Uncle! I need you to sign this!" I'm still in the hall, the less I see of Marge the better, I can still hear her complaining about criminal youths and their horrible parents. Normally I'm a fairly forgiving guy, but I swear to Merlin I will one day shove her dog where the sun doesn't shine.

"You're leaving then? Give me that slip." No yelling, no purple face, he's actually taking this rather well.

"Yes, I'll be back next summer, give my thanks to Aunt Petunia for the clothes, goodbye Uncle"  
That wasn't all that bad, probably the most civil conversation I ever held with my Uncle, who knows perhaps they are warming up to me. Nah!

It's been 20 minutes since I left Private Drive and I'm seriously contemplating to take my Nimbus out of my trunk and fly to London. You got to love those bigger than normal magical trunks though, otherwise I would have to carry my broom over my shoulder.

It isn't that my trunk is heavy, or that I'm hungry, I'm simply bored, walking is repetitive. I should probably start planning what I'm going to do next.  
Hermione is still in France, Ron is still in Egypt, I really wish I could have been there, the runes, or hieroglyphs, in that place must be amazing! So I can't stay with either of them and it's not like I can owl them either since Hedwig is still out hunting.  
I guess I could sleep in a nearby park. I could set up an easy Ýrrune for protection, Kaenfor heat and perhaps a Madr/Naudrarray to lock out any muggles? And then I can take a bus to London tomorrow, yeah, that'll work.

You know, runes are rather easy once you get the hang of it, once I found a nice bench in a nearby park I started working on my little camp.  
A low powered Kaen _(Fire)_ on the bench made my bed for the night comfortably warm, a large Ýr/Madr/Kaen _(Protection/Muggles/Illusion)_ array under the bench connected to 4 other Ýr's in a square formation gave me square of muggle free space. The Ýr/Madr gave me protection, and the Kaen part should cast a minor illusion over my square of space. Muggles should ignore whatever goes on inside.  
I was planning on putting in a mirrored Madrin the array as well, to give me protection from animals, but the mirrored Madr cancels out the normal Madr. Combining mirror and normal runes isn't covered until 6th year, guess there is a reason for that. Ah well, let's see if this bench is comfortable enough.

* * *

Having a giant black dog lick your face isn't the best way to get up, but it still beats Aunt Petunia's wake up calls. Wait, giant black dog? Merlin, that dog is huge! And happily wagging its tail for some reason, he looks kinda cute though. Black fur, tongue hanging out the left side of his mouth, tail thumping on the ground and looking at me with those big puppy dog eyes.

"You want something to eat boy?" I ask "Woof" I'll take that as a yes, let's see, I still got some bacon that I was going to give to Hedwig, might as well give it to this guy.

"Here you go, still got some bacon from last night" He must have been hungry because I blinked and the bacon is gone.

"Now to find a bus stop and get to London" The dog actually starts poking the pocket of my jacket, why would he do that? Oh he must have seen my wand "Sorry, but that is my wand, not going to let you play fetch with that."

He gives me a deadpan look, how a dog manages that expression I don't know, but I feel stupid now. He starts touching my wand with his right paw "Okay, okay, I'll take out my wand! Just cut it out already!" BANG!

As soon as I took out my wand and held it above my head out of the dog's reach a purple triple-decker bus appeared from Merlin knows where. The dog is actually giving me a smug look, like he knew what was going to happen, that dog is scary smart, let me tell you that.

As I get on the bus the dog lets out a whine, Merlin, I shouldn't have looked back, the puppy eyes are on full display.

"Alright, alright, you can come with me, just stop looking at me like that" "Woof!"

I shake my head as he walks past me, that isn't normal dog behaviour I'm sure of it.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, I'm the conductor Stan Shunpike, where can we drive you today?"

"Leaky Cauldron, London please"

"That's 2 sickles, 2S 10Knuts if you want hot chocolate and 3 sickles will get you a toothbrush in your favourite colour. Is that dog with you?" I nod "Animals that aren't in a cage cost another sickle"

"Alright, not chocolate or toothbrush please" I hand him 3 sickles and sit down on one of the chairs in the back of the bus. For some reason the dog is looking at me with a huge grin, yes the dog is grinning, I don't get it either.

* * *

Merlin, now I know why the dog was grinning so much, the Knight Bus is even better than the Gringotts carts, I don't think muggle amusement parks can top the Knight Bus. I just arrived at the Leaky Cauldron, the dog is still following me, at least he's good company.

"Lo Tom, can I get a room for the rest of the summer?"

"Welcome Mister Potter, we still have 3 accommodations available, the small attic room costs 1 galleon a day, the family room costs 1 galleon 10 sickles a day and finally we have the suit for 2 galleons a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included in these prices."

Let me do some math real quick, a galleon was 50 pounds last time I checked, so 100 pounds will provide me with 3 meals a day and a nice place to sleep, not too bad I guess.

"I'll take the suite" A whine attracts my attention "Right, are dogs allowed?"

"As long as they don't annoy the other guests"

"That shouldn't be an issue, can I put my trunk in the room already? I need to get to Gringotts before I can pay."

"I'll take your trunk up to your room, your key will be at the bar when you return"

Yeah, the knight bus is better than the Gringotts carts, the carts are still fun though. The dog actually went with me in Gringotts, jumped straight into the mine cart even before the goblin reached it. I need to give him a name if he's going to stick around though.

And that's the reason why I'm lying on my bed, looking at the dog and firing of a random name every second.  
"Chewbacca" "Whine" "Hoot!" "Alright, alright, bad name." Hedwig was actually waiting for me in this room, is it just me or are all the animals I know smarter than Dudley?  
"Spike?" "Whine" "Blacky?" That wasn't a whine, but it wasn't a bark either, guess I'm on the right track. "White? Don't tell me you're racist" "Whine" "Grey" "Whine" "Black?" "WOOF!"

"Alright, Black it is, see you tomorrow Black, Hedwig"

* * *

It's been 26 days since I left Privet Drive and I've learned quite a bit since then.

Apparently there is a mass murderer on the loose called Sirius Black and it seems that he's after me! What a surprise, it's not like I've been in enough near death situations to last a lifetime or anything. On a brighter note, I've bought my own Rune-Etching set, I used it to rewrite my Raedo rune on my trunk since my Raw Magic etched rune expired. This one should last until the fabric on which I etched the rune gets damaged.

I also managed to do a couple more of the control exercises for my Raw Magic, I can now have an orb in each hand and one flying in front of me. Changing the shape is going a bit slower, but I managed a diamond shaped construct just the other day.

I send the Weasleys and Hermione a letter stating where I was the day after I arrived at the Leaky Cauldron. Ron was excited about me getting my Hogsmeade slip signed and thought it was cool that I threatened the Dursleys and left after shouting at Marge, even I'm still kinda giddy about that. Hermione was the opposite, she was concerned about the Statute of Secrecy, asked about the runes I used and asked me if I was alright at least 3 times in her letter.

And I actually went shopping for some more muggle clothes, I got another pair of faded blue jeans and a pair of black jeans, 6 V-neck t-shirts, 2 in black, 2 in blue and 2 in white.

Right now I'm waiting on Ron and Hermione at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, they should arrive any second now. The Weasleys and Hermione are spending the night at the Leaky Cauldron so that we can all go to King's Cross Station together.

"Harry!" "Oof, 'Mione, let me breathe." I'll say it again, that girl has a healthy set of lungs, my ears are ringing from that shout and let's not even mention her arm strength, Merlin my ribs hurt.

Ron comes over and claps me on the back. "Sup Harry, how've you been, let him go Hermione, the guy needs a breather."

"Lo Ron, I've been fine, Merlin mate, did you hit a growth spurt in Egypt?"

"Yep" He popped the p loudly "grew an entire inch this summer, Egypt was brilliant, we almost trapped Percy in an old Egyptian tomb." I snickered, it was probably the twins who came up with that.

"How was France 'Mione?" She seemed to have enjoyed a sunny summer, she has a nice tan.

"It was wonderful, the weather was amazing! And Ronald, those tombs are dangerous, you could have really hurt your brother!"

Ah, all is as it should be, Ron and Hermione are arguing and I'm enjoying the fireworks while eating a nice sundae.

* * *

I just got in my bed, reminiscing about everything that happened today.

Ron got his new wand, 14 inches, willow with one unicorn tail-hair, both his wands so far have unicorn hair, I wonder if there is a connection in that. Best not to think about it, wandlore is too complicated. Scabbers looked like he could keel over any second now, especially once 'Mione bought Crookshanks. I noticed something today, everyone has a cooler looking wand then me, mine is a simply piece of wood, but Ron's and 'Mione's wand actually have these cool designs.

Anyway, got off track there for a second, the twins managed to have Percy's badge say: give me HeadBoys which really made me laugh. Especially since he strutted around with the badge proud on display.

Mr Weasley warned me about Sirius Black again, he was Voldemort's right hand man so that's the reason he'll come after me, to avenge Voldemort's 'death'.

"Whine" Black is looking at me with those puppy eyes again, it's even more effective now since he looks a lot better than he did when I found him, he gained a couple of pounds and his fur isn't as matter anymore.

"What is it Black, I'm about to go to... Merlin's balls!" I scramble away from Black, in less than a second my dog changed into a human being. Two things are going through my mind at the moment:  
'Awesome, he can turn into an animal like McGonagall.'  
And let's not forget the 'Oh sweet baby Merlin help me, Sirius Black is in my room.'

Okay this is bad, my wand is on the other side of the room, and Sirius Black is standing right in front of my bed. Raw Magic it is then.

Raw Magic started swirling around me, an orb of magic quickly forms in my hand. It might only be the size of a softball, but the magic is wound tightly together in this orb, it should do some major damage.

"Harry, I'm not here to hurt you" Black rasped, he puts his hand up in the air. Now that I think of it he could have hurt me at any given point while I was asleep in the last 26 days.

"Then what are you doing here? And why have you been masquerading as my dog for the last 26 days?" I start walking towards my wand, still keeping my arm with the Raw Magic pointed at Black.

"I'm innocent! I never killed those people, I never betrayed your parents Harry, you have to believe me!" That threw me off guard, what is it with people bringing up my parents?

"What do my parents have to do with any of this? And if you didn't kill those muggles then who did?"

"I was a friend of your parents, I'm your godfather. I was accused of betraying your parent's location to Voldemort and killing Wormtail and 12 muggles. But I didn't do it, it was Wormtail"

"Godfather? Betraying my parents? What in Merlin's name are you talking about? And who's this 'Wormtail'?"

"The Fidelius charm, do you know about it?" I nod, I've been obsessed with wards this last month and the Fidelius charm is rumoured to be better than any ward in the world. Charm is a bit of a misnomer though, it's a ward/charm combination. "I was known to the public as their Secret-Keeper but I convinced them to make Wormtail, that's Peter Pettigrew, the Secret-Keeper instead"

"It's easy to blame a dead man for your crimes isn't it, Black?" I ask him coldly

"He isn't dead! He's an Animagus like me! He's a rat! The largest thing they found of him was his finger, he cut it off himself. He's been living as a rat for almost 12 years."

Rat, missing a finger, living as a rat for 14 years. Damn, I think I know which rat it is.

"Scabbers? Are you saying my friend's rat is a human called Peter Pettigrew? Who's also the reason my parents are dead?" He nods "Prove it."

"I will, I just need that rat and another wizard who can perform the Homorphus charm, then we can transform him back into his human form"

I exhale deeply, I can do three things here. Get Mr. Weasley and have him arrest Black. Blast Black through the wall myself or do as he asks. Damn it all, I want to blast him through the wall so badly, but what if he's actually speaking the truth?

"I'll get the rat, after that we're floo-calling the headmaster. Hand me my Rune-Etching set and the box of my broom servicing kit will you?" If I'm going to capture a Animagus I might as well do it properly. "Thanks, I'll go get him after I'm done with this"

Now, what runes to use on this box, it needs to hold an Animagus so it needs to be strong enough to prevent it from breaking if he tries to turn back into his human form. It also needs to be closed tightly.

Naudr on the lock and Ór on the lid, box and hinges should make it strong enough to prevent him from changing. Perhaps I should make it soundproof as well, a mirrored Sól at the inside of the box should do. Six runes and some raw magic later, I got myself an unbreakable and soundproof box. At least until someone scratches out the runes, ah well, it's not like it has to be permanent or something.

Sneaking around in the Leaky Cauldron is stressful, every other floorboard creaks if I touch it. And the doors really need to be oiled soon. I open the door to Ron and Percy's room, I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. I see the rat at the end of Ron's bed and just like Black says he's missing the index finger from his right paw. It also explains Scabbers' sickness, he's stressed that Black will try and kill him.

I open my rune inscribed box, quickly shove Scabbers in and close the lid. Ron snores loudly but otherwise nothing happens, I'll tell Ron about this tomorrow, but right now I just want to know the truth as fast as possible.

A minute later and I'm in front of the floo with Black in his dog form by my side, I put down a sickle by the fireplace and grab a pinch of floo powder. I throw it in the fire, call out "Hogwarts Headmaster's Office" and put my head in the green flames. Floo calling is a weird experience, it's like one part of your body is in a normal room, while your head is in the Sahara's desert on a warm day, bloody uncomfortable it is.

"Harry? Why are you calling this early?"right, 1.47 a.m. 1st of September, he thinks this is school related. "I have an emergency sir, could I come through?"

He nods and gets out of the way, might be for the best since last time I took the floo I flew out rather spectacularly. I take my head out of the flames, look at Black, grab another pinch of floo powder and throw it in the fire. Me and Black step in at the same time and I call out "Hogwarts Headmaster's Office".

It seems that I'm still horrible at flooing, I really need to practice the landing, I hit the wall opposite of the fireplace in the Headmaster's office. Black is doing that weird barking laugh thing of his while the Headmaster's eyes are twinkling like mad. And let's not forget the chuckling portraits, phoenix and sentient hat. Have I mentioned how much I hate this place?

"I'll give you a 9 for the landing Harry, it was rather spectacular, now what can I do for you today?"

"I need you to perform a Homorphus charm on a rat I have in this box sir. " I say as I place the box on his desk.

"The runes on this box are well made, but they are rather simplistic, it's your work I assume?" I give him a nod as he continues "Now, which one of your friends is stuck in his illegal Animagus form Harry?"

"It's not his friend Albus, it's Peter Pettigrew." Okay, Black did the dramatic step out of the shadows while revealing vital information perfectly. And the look on the headmaster's face is one that I will always treasure, jaw hanging loose, eyebrows up in his hairline, eyes wide open, just perfect. At least it was until he blasted Black across the room faster than I could keep track of, then it just became scary, eyes colder then chipped ice, face set in stone with a grim look on his face.

"Albus, me, James and Pettigrew became Animagii, Pettigrew is a rat and he's in that box" Black manages to gasp out while holding his most likely bruised ribs.

"Harry stand back, Black stay still before I put you down myself" See what I mean? Dumbledore can be scary when he's mad.

The box clicks open after Dumbledore slashed the Naudr rune with his wand, immediately after the box opens Scabbers, I guess I should call him Wormtail now, tries to escape but Dumbledore is simply too fast. He jabs his wand at Wormtail and he starts changing mid dash, where there was a rat not a second ago now lies a fat man.

"Peter Pettigrew" Dumbledore sighs "I'm sorry Sirius, but I will still need your testimony under Veritaserum." Sirius nods as Dumbledore stuns Wormtail.  
After that the headmaster walks over to the fireplace, yells out "Slytherin's Head of House's Bedroom" and puts his head in the fire "Severus, I need you in my office with a bottle of your best Veritaserum within 10 minutes, don't react to anything once you arrive."

Dumbledore made another floocall to a location I didn't recognize before sitting back down.

The next 2 hours flew past extremely quickly, the Head of the DMLE came by with 2 Aurors, Snape came in at the same time and tried to strangle Sirius, Snape's expression was another one for the history books. Sirius was interrogated under Veritaserum, which is apparently the strongest truth serum in existence. The kiss on sight order was reversed but he still had to show up at an official trial tomorrow in the afternoon. Peter Pettigrew was thrown in custody with Anti-Animagus wards around his cell and Snape looked like he swallowed a lemon.

Now I'm sitting in a chair in Dumbledore's office and everything is winding down.

"Harry, as you know I am your godfather but I am also your legal guardian and the person who should have raised you if I had not been send to Azkaban. If I'm freed tomorrow you'll be able to come live with me if you want." I gaped at him, I might not know much about Sirius but I do know he was better company as a dog than the Dursleys ever were.  
Dumbledore looks like he was about to interject but Sirius cut him off.

"It's alright if you don't want to, I understand you'd rather stay at home with your family."

"Home? Family? Are you crazy? Privet Drive has never been and never will be my home, and the Dursleys will never be my family" One of the gadgets on Dumbledore's desk suddenly lets out a dying wail. Dumbledore looks a bit annoyed, I guess that was a rather expensive gadget.

"Well Harry, you just managed to collapse the wards that I personally erected at Privet Drive almost 12 years ago. " Dumbledore sighs "When your mother died she gave you a powerful protection that managed to reflect the killing curse, this protection is also what burned Quirrel when he tried to touch you in your first year. For this protection to remain you had to live with a blood relative in the same place and you both had to call that place 'home' and call each other family.

"Now that you've publicly rejected Privet Drive as your home and Petunia as your family, the protection that has been with you since birth shattered."

"So that's the reason why I had to stay with the Dursleys, but now that the protection failed I won't have to go back ever again?" I ask him, I hope I don't sound too eager "No Harry, you don't have to return to Privet Drive ever again. "

"Thank Merlin's hairy nutsack, am I happy that part of my life is over, so this means I can live with Sirius during the breaks?" He nods and Sirius cheers and hugs me.

You know? This year might actually be fun, no mass murderer that wants to kill me on the loose and I'm finally free from the Dursleys.

* * *

 **AN: Yes, I basically scrapped PoA completely, I know!**

 **I have good reasons for that though, can you honestly think Harry wouldn't use his Raw Magic to get 3 meals a day? Or his books? This basically started it all, hogsmeade slip is gained in the same way. And since Marge didn't actually get blown up or see any magic there isn't any need to involve the ministry.**

 **This all leads to a relatively calm Harry leaving Privet Drive, which means he isn't going to flinch and fall over with his wand out.**

 **This leads to Sirius actually getting close to Harry in his dog form, no Minister at the Leaky Cauldron which again translates to having access to muggle London.**

 **PoA is all based on Sirius not getting close to Harry when he leaves Privet Drive, PoA is based on Sirius not going to someone trustworthy like Dumbledore, or Amelia Bones or Andromeda Tonks.**

 **The collapse of the wards is me saying fuck you to something that is unnecessary in the first place, after book 1 the protection does absolutly nothing. In my opinion the blood wards was simply J.K.'s way of having a poorly treated hero. Like living in a cupboard for 10 years isn't enough of a sobstory. So yeah, big changes at first glance, not so big if you take a moment to look at the entire series.**

 **Now, I do have to be carefull with how I continue, Voldemort's wand is still in Pettigrew's possession, I made sure that the wand didn't show up in Dumbledore's office. So that means it's with the DMLE.**

 **This also means that Harry might not learn the patronus, I'm honestly not sure about that yet.**

 **If you hate it, love it or simply have any question please leave a review. Flames are welcome actually, as long as you explain what's wrong in them. 'This is shit' doesn't tell me anything, 'Your explanation of Runes is shit' gives me more to work with.**

 **Aegorm, Out!**


	3. The Calm before the Storm

**A.N.: 6000 words this chapter which means I'll have about 18.000 words in total. I got 7 reviews, 33 favourites, 58 follows, 977 views and 530 unique visitors. I'm rather happy about that.**

 **This chapter covers quite a bit actually, we delve deeper into Runes and explore the beginnings of Lightning. You'll also get a reason for the pureblood superiority complex and a minor portion of politics. We also have some pretty big time skips, I won't write things that remain cannon, I will simply go over them really quick.**

 **We also meet two potential love interests for Harry. Harry will date different girls at different times, no harem but also no love at first sight.**

 **Politics are an important part of the Harry Potter universe, so I'll explore them a bit, I won't have a Political Super!Harry but Sirius will go to the Wizengamot.**

 **Anyway, enjoy the story. And please review/favourite/follow.**

* * *

I'm fairly sure that last night was the most productive night I'll ever have, I found out I have a godfather, I escaped from the Dursleys, I helped in the capture of a traitor and I saw some facial expressions that are worth more than gold.

But I just have this feeling I forgot something, ah well, if I can't remember then it probably wasn't important anyway. Might as well wake up.

"HARRY! Harry! Wake up! Scabbers is gone!" Oh _riiight_ , that's what I missed.

"Sit down Ron, I got a lot to tell you."

"WHAT?!" I'm fairly sure the entire Leaky Cauldron heard that shout. But I guess that's how anyone would react if you tell them that they slept in the same bed as a 30 year old mass murderer for multiple years.

"So, let me go over that again, Sirius Black, the Azkaban escapee, is innocent and my pet rat Scabbers is an Animagus called Peter Pettigrew. And Scabbers framed Black for his crimes? And last night Scabbers was arrested and Black will get a trial this afternoon?"

"Yeah, that's a fairly good summary, good job Ron." I clap him on the back, pick up my trunk and head out of my room. Ron's still sitting on my bed looking straight ahead, meh he'll get over it.

* * *

I forgot how hectic the first of September is with the Weasleys.  
Fred and George are doing their very best to make everyone late, Percy is scolding the twins while wearing his Give me HeadBoys badge. I'm fairly sure Ginny fainted when I accidently touched her when she came out of her room.  
Mrs. Weasley is doing her very best to bring Order out of Chaos and Mr. Weasley is simply sipping his coffee and enjoying the show. He has the right idea, this is comedy gold.

"Good morning Mr. Weasley."

"Good morning Harry, did you sleep well?" I wonder how he'll react, oh he's sipping his coffee, now's the moment!

"Not really, Sirius Black came in my room last night." There it is, the beautiful spit-take I was looking for.

"What!?" His jaw is hanging loose and his eyes almost bulge out of his head, better tell him the complete story before he gets a heart attack.

He took it better than Ron, no blank stare at a wall, no breakdown, I'm rather impressed. He simply swallowed, said he should have noticed something about Scabbers and continued watching the chaos that is the Weasley family on September 1st.

* * *

We made it! I really thought we were going to miss the train this year, we only arrived at 10:58 a.m. so that gave us 2 minutes to get our trunks on the train. It was a bloody madhouse, that's what it was. Right now I'm with Hermione and Ron looking for a compartment, but most if not all of them are already occupied.

We finally found an almost empty compartment near the back of the train, it's only occupied by Nevile and 2 Hufflepuff girls. Go Neville!

"Lo Neville, do you mind if we join you?"

"A-alright Harry, come in, you know Susan and Hannah right?"

"We do, we had Defence together from the fraud last year didn't we?" Ron's a bit blunt about it, even I remember Susan fawning over Lockhart with 'Mione last year.

"Lockhart is a great wizard! You shouldn't mock someone who had a horrible accident!" Wait, people seriously don't know what really happened to Lockhart? Oh this is brilliant!  
Me and Ron burst out into peals of laughter and even Hermione has a small smile on her face. I don't think Susan appreciates it though, she's becoming rather red.

"We're sorry, but you don't know what happened to Lockhart do you? I thought everyone would know by now."

"What are you talking about? Mr. Lockhart was involved in an accident while trying to cure someone's amnesia. "

"I think you got it wrong, he was trying to give _us_ amnesia, can you explain it 'Mione? I don't think Susan is appreciating our words" Ron manages to gasp out in between peals of laughter.

Ten minutes and a broken dream later we're all talking about our summer, it seems that Susan had a rough summer, with her aunt as the Head of the DMLE things were rather hectic in her house.

"I was woken up in the middle of last night because of a floo-call, it was so annoying, Auntie was gone for 3 hours!"

"Is your aunt a grey haired witch with a monocle?" I'm fairly sure she was in the headmaster's office last night.

"Yup" She pops the p loudly "How do you know?"

"She was in Dumbledore's office last night to absolve Sirius Black" I enjoy the reactions of people too much, don't I? Right, I haven't told Hermione yet either, might as well let everyone know now, it's going to be in the Daily Prophet tomorrow anyway.

Not even an hour after I finished my story our compartment door opens and Malfoy struts in with a minion on each side.

"Are you going after him Potter? Are you going to try and kill Black" Malfoy drawls out.

"Already did, he's probably at the Wizengamot right now." Let him figure that one out.

"You don't know what he di... wait, what do you mean he's in the Wizengamot right now?" I love swiping that smug all knowing expression of his face, it's just so much fun!

"He came to my room last night, then I brought him to Dumbledore, do you have anything else to say or is this the moment you run away screaming 'When my father hears about this!'?"

"Wh-What?!" He sputters, it looks like he's going to say something else, but he just turns around and exits the compartment dragging his minions along with him.

"Harry! I just remembered what I wanted to talk about!" Hermione says "Remember the book on affinities you showed me?" I nod. "Well, naturally I immediately owl-ordered multiple books about the history of affinities to research why they got taken out of the curriculum." I'm pretty sure I hear Ron cough out 'naturally' under his breath, but I motion Hermione to continue.

"It seems that affinities run in the family, the affinities of a child are often a combination of the affinities of the parents. So pureblood families came up with the idea to create super children by marrying specific families to combine their affinities in the early 800's. It was already done on a minor scale before that date, but it became common practice after that.

"It all worked out rather well, but once the 1700's came around the pureblood families were so closely tied together that the children began to lose affinities rather than gain them because of inbreeding. And the affinities they did get were weaker than before. The original idea behind pureblood marriages was already forgotten and not marrying muggleborns was more out of racism than having strong children.

"So once it became clear that the pureblood children had less and weaker affinities than muggleborns, the purebloods pushed through a law to ban affinities from being tested at Hogwarts and being used as a requirement for employment since muggleborns were now gaining the better paid jobs."

"Blimey Hermione, you're scary smart, you know that right" Ron says. Me and the others in the compartment nod in agreement.

"My family still tests the Heir for his or her affinities, mine's Herbology, Elemental spells: Earth and my last one was still developing last time I did the test. It's the reason my family has such high expectations for me, I'm the first Longbottom in over 150 years to have both of the classic Longbottom affinities."

"I have Charms and Spell-Creation, Spell-Creation is the traditional Bones affinity, but we never really lost our affinity. I guess we never did as much inbreeding as the other pureblood families."

"You're a half-blood aren't you Susan? You're mother was a muggleborn right? And Neville, your mother was a half-blood wasn't she?" Hermione receives 2 nods to her question. "And your mother was a muggleborn as well Harry. Don't you see it? You three have the strongest affinities in your families in years and one of your parents or grandparents was a muggleborn. The new magical blood strengthens your affinities."

"I don't know Hermione, the Bones never really participated with the pureblood marriages like Susan said and I know for a fact a lot of the Potters married muggleborns over the years. I'm not sure about the Longbottoms but I can't imagine they inbred as much as the Blacks and the Malfoys." Ron says.

"You're right Ron, my family is proud of its blood status but we still married a half-blood every 3 or 4 generations. When did you find out your affinities Harry?" Neville turns to me.

"I found out about them last year, after the Chamber of Secrets fiasco. Mine are Runes, Elemental Spells: Lightning and Raw Magic Manipulation, been training Raw Magic since I found out about them and I've been working on some runes as well. Haven't gotten around to Lightning yet." Neville lets out a whistle of appreciation.

"Nice, you got the traditional Potter Runes affinity and the Black's Lightning affinity from your Grandmother, the Raw Magic affinity is rare though, hasn't been seen in Britain for over 300 years." Neville really knows his affinities, impressive.

"Wait? My grandmother was a Black?" Neville nods "You didn't know? Your Grandparents were Charlus Potter and Dorea Potter née Black. Pureblood Heirs learn the recent family trees of all the important families."

So I'm related to Sirius by blood, awesome.

* * *

The rest of the train ride went smoothly, no more confrontations with any Slytherins, just a nice relaxing ride. In first year I never appreciated the view during the train ride, I was too nervous, and last year's ride was spent in a flying sauna, air-conditioning would have been welcome back then.

I will admit me, Nev and Ron tried , and succeeded, to peak when the girls were changing and Merlin's beard, Susan is an early bloomer, I don't know anything about breast sizes but even I realize she's bigger than normal. Neville felt bad, but he was still pushing Ron out of the way to get a look, we're teenage boys, what did you expect?

As we arrive at the horseless carriages, Hannah and Susan go to their Hufflepuff friends and I can't help but notice the sway in their step. Merlin's beard I'm becoming hormonal but I'm fairly sure Ron and Neville are thinking the same thing since their eyes are glued on the girls' swaying backsides as well. Damn you Hogwarts robes for concealing the beauty that is Hannah's ass!  
I feel like I'm forgetting something rather important, can't put my finger on it though.

"Harry James Potter! Ronald Bilius Weasley! Neville Frank Longbottom! Stop staring at Hannah and Susan and get in the carriage!" Right, 'Mione is watching us perv, and I'm fairly sure Hannah was just about to bend down to tie her shoelace! Missed opportunities!

"Yes Hermione, we're sorry Hermione" We say in unison, women are scary.

* * *

"Hey Nev, pass me the roast beef will you?" Hogwarts' roast beef is amazing, best dish on the table.

Percy approaches me, what a shame, his badge is fixed, wonder what he wants.

"Harry, the headmaster wants to see you in his office immediately after the feast" I nod, and Percy turns away "And I have to tell you he likes Snickers, I'm not sure what he means by that. Hermione, Professor McGonagall said she has a solution for your problem, you should go see her after the feast as well."

"What did you do Harry? How can you already be in trouble, we've only been in Hogwarts for an hour!" Parvati asks me, she probably wants to have some fresh gossip.

"It's nothing, we just have to discuss something about my summer, you'll find out tomorrow."

"Come in Harry." I have to know how he does that, I was just about to knock!

Sirius is in the office and so is our new professor, Remus Lupin, what's he doing here.

"You'll be happy to know that Sirius got cleared from all charges, his illegal Animagus sentence was nullified since he spend almost 12 years in Azkaban compared to the normal 6 months for that particular crime."

"I'm officially a free man Prongslet!" Prongslet? What's that supposed to mean? "The ministry is paying for my rehabilitation and 30.000 galleons for every year I was wrongly imprisoned."

"What kind of rehabilitation? So that means you get 360.000 galleons?" He shakes his head. "I only spend 11 years wrongly imprisoned, 6 months of my time in Azkaban was justified with my illegal Animagus form." So, 330.000 galleons times 50, equals 16.500.000 pounds. "That's a lot of money."

"No, it's the standard amount, no matter how far the House of Black fell in the past few years, it's still a Noble and Most Ancient House. And I'm it's Heir, if I had already taken up Lordship it would have been triple that amount." Heirs? Lordships? Ancient Houses? Wizarding politics at its finest I guess.

"I'm going to a rehabilitation centre in France for 3 months, I'm malnourished and apparently I might be insane." He barks out with a laugh. "Everything should be alright before the Winter Holidays, so you can spend Yule with me if you want. We can go to the Black family property on the British Virgin Islands, I'll probably have to hire someone to clean that place before we can live there."

"Right, better introduce you now, Harry, this is Remus Lupin otherwise known as Moony, he was a good friend of your parents as well. Moony, this is Harry, godson extraordinaire."

"It's nice to meet you professor Lupin." Sirius snickers. "Professor, pff, brilliant!"

"You can call me Remus or Moony when we're alone Harry. If you want I can tell you some stories about your parents during this school year."

"That would be amazing, thanks Remus." I beam at him.

"Now of to bed with you, Harry, you have class tomorrow." The headmaster interjects.

"Alright, see you tomorrow Remus, don't forget to write Sirius, I'll see you at Christmas." I give Sirius a hug and head out of the door.

* * *

My dorm mates are too loud, they woke me up at 7 a.m. and I don't even have class first period! Ron and Neville have Divination, Seamus and Dean have Muggle Studies. They claim it's a free O.W.L. since they live in muggle households. Couldn't they just take the exam but follow another class? Ah well, might as well wake up, get something to eat and look for books on Lightning spells.

Now that I'm allowed to use my wand again I can start working on my Lightning affinity, Brian says I should start with small Lightning spells and work my way up. To know how much power each spell takes, and how the magic feels when I use it.

The weakest lightning charm is 'Scintillus', all it does is create tiny electric sparks around the tip of your wand that shock people when you poke them with your wand, it doesn't really hurt, . Not really all that useful, but it's a gateway to stronger spells. A small addition to the incantation and a bit more power will turn this spell into a painful curse not unlike an overpowered taser.

"Look at Potty sitting all alone by the lake, where are your friends Potter?" Great, I was so close to figuring out why the name Brian W. Percival sounds so familiar, it was on the tip of my tongue!

"What do you want Malfoy? It's rude to interrupt someone while they're reading." I put away _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ , it's not like I want to keep my affinities a secret, but I'd prefer that Malfoy only finds out after I blast him in the face with Raw Magic.

"Where's the mudblood and the ginger? Did they finally notice you're dangerous to be around? Are they afraid of Black?" I snicker, loudly, he hasn't looked at the prophet yet. Brilliant!

"Didn't I tell you yesterday I brought Black to the headmaster? Have you even looked at the Daily Prophet today? You might learn something new, here you can have mine, I'm done with it anyway."

The headline says 'SIRIUS BLACK INNOCENT! PETER PETTIGREW ALIVE AND GUILTY! HARRY POTTER CAPTURES HIS PARENTS' REAL TRAITOR!'  
The surprise shows clearly on his face, along with anger, why would he be mad? Wait, he actually ignores me and walks away? What's happening here?

* * *

Neville knows the answer once again, it seems that Draco was next in line for the Black fortune, but Sirius will most likely banish Draco, his mother and his aunt Bellatrix from the family, so he'll lose his chance to receive the Black fortune. Neville really knows his pureblood politics.

Right now we're walking towards Hagrid's hut for our first Care of Magical Creatures class, we just had Defence and it was really good, I'm a bit ticked off that I didn't get a chance with the Boggart but it was still a good class.

"Gather 'round, we're goin' ter the edge o' the Forbidden Forest, got some int'restin' beasties fer today." As we get closer to the edge of the forest, Hagrid tells us to wait by the pens as he goes into the forest.

Hagrid came back 10 minutes later with half a dozen half-horse, half-eagle creatures behind him.

"Firs' thing yeh gotta know abou' hippogriffs is tha' they're very proud creatures, very eas'ly offended. Yeh don' wan' to insult one, migh' be the last thing yeh do in yer life. Now, who'd like ter come say hello?" I'm going to stand completely still, maybe he won't notice me then.

"Ah Harry, come on, he won' bite, hop'fully, jus' keep eye contact and bow deeply, if he bows back yeh can touch 'im."

My classmates are cowards, all taking a step back, damn. Okay, deep breaths, look the hippogriff in the eyes ("His name is Buckbeak!"), bow deeply, and stay. C'mon, bow back already, my back's starting to hurt.  
There we go, good boy. Does a hippogriff have ears I can scratch behind? Nope, but he seems to like me scratching his neck.

"I think he'll let yeh ride 'im, Harry." He's actually pretty nice, wait ride? Oh Merlin no!

Riding Buckbeak was amazing, I didn't have control over him but it was still nice to be in the air again, I missed that, it's been 2 months since I last flew. Right now I'm trying to get Neville to approach the our assigned hippogriff.

"C'mon Nev, you saw me, they are rather nice once you bow down to them, just keep eye contact. As long as you aren't stupid enough to insult one you'll be fine."

"You're just a stupid filthy beast." Oh crap, and here I thought no one would be stupid enough to do that, bloody Malfoy. "AAAHHH! That brainless beast attacked me!"

"Oh in Merlin's name, are you that stupid? The professor said to never insult a hippogriff you twit!"

"Outta me way, lemme through. Stop whinin' Malfoy, it's jus' a scratch, Madam Pomfrey will fix yeh righ' up." Seeing Malfoy being carried away while he's screaming loud enough for a Banshee to think he's doing his mating call is amazing, seeing Parkinson running behind him crying about her 'little Dragon' while dragging Bulstrode with her is pure gold, seeing Crabbe and Goyle standing still not knowing what to do without instructions is just sad.

"Minion 1 and 2, you should probably go to the infirmary." They actually give me a grateful nod and hurry behind Malfoy and Parkinson. "Is it just me or are all the Slytherins of our year complete idiots?" I ask Neville.

"I'd prefer it if you don't put me in the same class as Malfoy and his groupies, Potter, some of us aren't disgraces to our house." You know, I really don't know who those two girls are, they're Slytherins and wow, they're beautiful!

"Pst, Nev, who are they?" I ask Nevile as they turn back to their Hippogriff, Neville actually sighs at me, that's new.

"The blond one is Daphne Greengrass, pureblood, heir of the Greengrass family, the ravenette is Tracey Davis, Half-blood, one of the few in Slytherin." You learn something new every day I guess.

* * *

It's my first Ancient Runes class today and I'm excited, I may have already activated some runes during the summer, but I did the extremely basic stuff. I only used single runes and arrays of 2 and 3 runes, in this class we might not activate our arrays till 5th year but we will learn how to make up to 5 rune arrays and a lot of different combinations.

As we head in I take the time to look at who else is taking this class, from Gryffindor there's only me and Hermione, Hufflepuff has Susan Bones, Ernie Macmillan and Hannah Abbot. Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott, Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass show up for Slytherin and basically all the Ravenclaws from our year are in this class as well, I only recognize Padma Patil to be honest.

After we listened to the lesson plans for Ancient Runes, Professor Babbling began a rather boring lecture on the history of Runes, which is the reason I'm almost asleep right now, I really don't care about the history of each individual Rune in the Futhark script. I like using runes, learning their meaning, finding out which runes work well together, the history of a rune seems so useless.

I yawn, loudly, I'm fairly sure everyone heard that. "Is there a problem Mister Potter?"

Quick, I need a lie. "No I'm fine, I'm still catching up sleep from the entire Sirius Black spectacle." Hell yeah, that's a great lie! Hermione still seems rather sceptical and so does Susan and Greengrass, ah well, can't fool them all I guess.

Once the class ends I quickly grab my book and my Rune-Etching set and head out of the door, it seems that Ancient Runes is going to be rather boring this semester. We're going to learn the history of each rune in the Futhark Script and all the possible meanings of each rune. We're only going to start etching after Christmas, a shame really.

"You don't look so tired anymore Potter, or was Runes simply too hard for you?" Greengrass says with a challenging smirk on her face.

"It's the opposite really, I think we're going to slow. I'd prefer to start etching Runes right away, it's not that difficult." She doesn't believe me, I can see it.

"Prove it." I sigh deeply "Alright Greengrass, what do you want me to do?"

"How about you Etch a rune for protection in this stone?" She pulls out a fairly high quality Runestone, a stone like that is normally used to ward a door if you can't etch on the door itself.

"Do you have to ward your room or something? You'd be better with Etched runes in the door itself." I think I might be on to something since her cheeks become a bit pink.

"I like my privacy Potter, are you going to do it or not?"

"Fine, do you want to simply have a powerful lock or actual protection against people who aren't keyed into the stone? Or perhaps both?" If I do this I might as well do it properly.

"Can you do both?" I nod "Then both if you don't mind."

"Alright, let's head to the library then." As I start to walk away I hear my name being called.

"Mister Potter, I'd prefer it if you Etch the runes under my supervision, come back in the classroom please." Even better, if I do this well I might get some advanced coursework.

"I'll catch up with you later Hermione, if I don't make it before Transfiguration could you grab me something to eat?" She nods and walks towards the Great Hall.

Five minutes late and I'm sitting at my desk in the Ancient Runes class with my Etching set in front of me. I'm actually fairly hopeful that my Raw Magic control will be good enough soon to do good Etching without my tools, I should have the control necessary for that by Christmas.

"So, you want a runic lock and an impenetrable protection bubble over your door, right?" After she nods, I cut the Runestone in two parts. "It's easier to work with 2 separate parts for this."

A Naudr _(Closure,lock)_ rune on one half should be good enough as a lock, the other part is a bit harder, but still doable.  
"Do you want to be the only one who can get into your room without you turning off the array?"

"No, I share my room with Tracey Davis." Alright, means I'll have to use an array with three runes.

"Alright, I'm going to be using an array with three runes then. Ýr _(Protection)_ linked with Ór _(unmovable)_ will provide the defensive part, I'm adding an Ós _(Wizard, witch)_ rune to identify the people you allow entrance. That rune will be linked to the Ýr _(Protection)_ rune as well." I explain as I'm Etching the Naudr _(Closure,lock)_ rune in one of the halves.

"After I'm done with this I'm going to charge the runes, once you get to your dorm put a tiny bit of magic into the Ós _(Wizard, witch)_ rune and have Davis do the same, you'll probably be a bit tired after you do that, it'll feel like you just did an intensive Charm class.

"Place the Naudr _(Closure,lock)_ rune next to the lock with a sticking charm and the array above the door. To activate the lock simply put some magic in the rune, the amount of magic needed for Lumos should be enough.

"To activate the protection ward put some magic in the Ýr _(Protection)_ rune, again, the amount will be roughly that of a Lumos spell. The quality of the Runestone is fairly good, so with the amount of magic I'm going to put into the runes they should last a solid two years." I say as I finish the last rune in the array. I put a hand on each half of the Runestone and let Raw Magic seep into the runes. I hear two gasps, oh right, I'm charging runes without my wand and my hands are glowing.

"Right, I'd prefer it if you kept that a secret for a little while longer Greengrass, I'd prefer to surprise Malfoy with it before everyone knows about it." I give her a cheeky grin which she returns.

"Well Mister Potter, I can see why you found my lecture boring now, you're almost at a high enough level to go straight to 4th year. Have you tried to make an array with 4 runes yet?" Professor Babbling asks me.

"I have, it was an array not unlike this one, only with protection against sound and minor pain to anyone besides me that tries to enter the room. It was without the Ós _(Wizard, witch)_ rune though. The array was Ýr _(Protection),_ Ór _(unmovable)_ , Sól _(song,sound)_ and Thuris _(pain, thorns)_. I still have issues with arrays with 4 runes that covers a bigger area and normal arrays with more than 4 runes." I explain as I put my Etching set in my bag.

"We'll talk about extra coursework during our next lesson, you should hurry to the Great Hall now if you still want lunch." I nod and turn to Greengrass.

"Let me know if it works alright? Why do you need a ward anyway?"

"Pansy keeps barging into our room asking for 'girl time' and Malfoy has tried to peek on us multiple times already. It's annoying!" She explains with a roll of her eyes.

"Can boys get into the female dorms in Slytherin? The stairs won't allow the boys to get into the female dorm in Gryffindor."

"No, in Slytherin you have to depend on yourself and in a minor degree on your allies, it builds character." She explains "Well see you later Potter, and thanks."

* * *

Halloween, or Samhain as Neville tells me it's called by the Purebloods, is today, which means we can go to Hogsmeade and eat an amazing feast tonight.

The name of Halloween is the same thing as Christmas and Yule, one is a catholic holiday and the other is a part of the Old Ways. It is pretty weird that we as wizards would celebrate a Christian holiday, it's not like we believe in the God from the Bible. Neville explains that we don't actually celebrate Christmas at all in the castle, the tree, the colours, the date, the mistletoe and basically everything else is from Yule.  
Christianity only added Christ to the holiday 300 years after he died. A lot of holidays are like that, at least the ones that have the same date as the solstices, they got changed in the muggle world, but remained largely the same in the Wizarding world.  
You learn something new every day.

Butterbeer is the best drink in the whole world, it's so good! At the moment me, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Susan and Hannah are sitting in the Three Broomsticks enjoying our Butterbeers and a nice lunch, we've been to every shop in Hogsmeade already. Honeydukes has so many different sorts of candy, it's unreal. Zonko's must be a paradise for the twins and I bet the Marauders bought their fair share of products from that shop.  
I'm still looking for the map ever since Remus told me about it, I've already been in Filch's office, but it wasn't there. Remus won't tell me about the secret passages, something about his duty as a professor, but Sirius send a list with every secret passage that leads out of the castle on it.

This is the first Halloween that I truly enjoyed, no deathdays, no trolls, no Dursleys, just my friends, food and drinks. I'm in my bed right now after a small party in the Gryffindor tower, I sipped some firewhiskey, that stuff is strong!

* * *

I step of the Hogwarts express after an amazing Yule holiday, the British Virgin Isles are amazing! Sirius gave me a Firebolt as a Yule gift, to make up for 12 missed Yule holidays and birthdays, I'm keeping my Nimbus 2000 for nostalgic reasons, I put it above my bed at home. Yes, I actually think of the Black Virgin Isle as home, it's a nice feeling. Sirius is completely rehabilitated and he's a good quidditch player, he bought himself a Firebolt as well, I saw that one coming from 2 miles away.

We also managed to save Buckbeak, Neville came up with the idea that Sirius buys Buckbeak. If a Gamekeeper's Hippogriff hurts an Heir of a Noble house it will be sentenced to death, but if a hippogriff owned by a Lord of a Noble and Most Ancient House hurts that same Heir, the most that will happen is a small fine. And even that isn't guaranteed since Malfoy ignored the instructions and warnings of the beast's caretaker and provoked the hippogriff intentionally.

I trained my Lightning affinity with Sirius, he's one of the extremely lucky ones that has his family affinity even after generations upon generations of inbreeding.  
I learned _Scintillus Ulcer_ , the painful taser spell, and I'm working on _Fulgis_ , this spell shoots out a lightning bolt. I have to be careful with _Fulgis_ , the spell requires quite a bit of power, is hard to control and is potentially lethal.  
Just like with all lightning spells there is no room for mistakes, a bit too much power and the spell will explode right in front of you, too little power and you don't even get a spark. My affinity makes it easier, normally you would only start learning spells like this after your N.E.W.T.'s but I still need to work with extreme caution.

* * *

I get off the Hogwarts express with a satisfied sigh, I had a productive and calm year for a change. I did great on my exams, I got a perfect score on Defence and Runes, I got enough control over my Raw Magic to Etch runes with perfect precision, Professor Babbling is jealous, I can see it clear as day.

I also managed to make a Runic array with 7 runes in it, an area ward that gives a strong protection with an illusion on top of it. It also has an identification rune on it to allow access to people keyed into the ward. If anyone looks past the illusion and tries to enter the protected area they will get punished depending on their intentions. If they simply want to enter with no bad intentions they will receive a chill, if they have bad intentions they would feel pain.

This was the array: **Ýr** _ **(protection)**_ **/Ór** _ **(unmovable)**_ **/Ós** _ **(Wizard, Witch)**_ **/Kaen** _ **(Illusion)**_ **/Bjarkán** _ **(Sight, future, aura)**_ **/Isa** _ **(Cold)**_ **/Thuris** _ **(Pain)**_ _.  
_ Ýr is the main rune, Ór, Ós, Kaen and Bjarkán are connected to it. Isa and Thuris are connected to Bjarkán since it depends on that rune which of the two will activate.

My other classes had mixed results, only got an A in Potions and History but besides those two I in the top 15 for all my classes. Always behind Hermione, the smarter Ravenclaws and more often than not behind Greengrass as well, she gave me the most infuriating superior look you can imagine once she found out. But then on the other hand I did rub it in her face I'm taking my Ancient Runes O.W.L. next year, so I guess I deserved it.

Ron managed to get a perfect score for Divination, he wrote down a seemingly real prophecy from Trelawny. It goes like this:

 _"It will happen tonight. The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been living like a Lord these past twelve years. Tonight, before midnight... the Lord will acquire his master's wand and set out to rejoin his master, once more a servant. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever he was. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..."_

I really hope she was just high from the fumes in her tower because that doesn't sound good, not at all.

Neville got a perfect score in Herbology, I encouraged him to ask for more advanced coursework after Yule, he might take his Herbology O.W.L. next year as well.

My Lightning affinity is going rather slowly, I learned the _Fulgis_ curse but it isn't going to go any faster. With my constantly growing core it's hard to keep track of how much power I need to put in each spell and since it can get such volatile reactions it's best to save delving deeper in this affinity until after my 17th birthday.

We won the Quidditch cup! With my new Firebolt we completely destroyed the enemy teams. Oliver cried on my shoulder once I caught the final snitch of the year. Having a grown man cry on your shoulder isn't really pleasant.

Ah, I see Sirius and Remus, better go greet them, Remus lost his job at Hogwarts thanks to Snivellus telling everyone he's a werewolf. I'm going to learn how to prank from Sirius just to get revenge for Remus.

For some reason I have a feeling that next year won't be nearly as calm, as a matter of fact, I'm getting a bit restless. I got all these amazing new skills and I'm itching to try them out, it's not like I enjoy those life and death situations but I do think I'm a bit of an adrenaline junky. Perhaps I can join the duelling circuit this summer? Even if I lose it'll still be fun

As I walk to Sirius and Remus I see an old Daily Prophet with the headline 'PETER PETTIGREW RECEIVES THE DEMENT'S KISS, NO NEW PRISONER OF AZKABAN'. For some reason that headline makes me smile.

* * *

 **A.N.: We covered the entire third year, I told you we we're going to cover a lot didn't I?  
Third year really was just filler, setting everything up for the clusterfuck that is fourth year.**

 **The Tri-Wizard tournament will be changed a bit, more like Jbern's 'The Lie I've Lived'. It was always odd to me that they didn't simply chose 2 champion's without the Goblet of Fire. Those 2 can back out at any time unlike the 'real' champions but they can still win it.**

 **the three tasks themselves were also rather dull, only the first task had any viewing value. The second task was literally looking at water for the viewers. So we'll change that up a bit.**

 **Cya,**

 **Aegorm**


	4. Bikinis, Duels, Dates and Goblets

**A.N.: This chapter is me testing my limits on both action scenes and romance. I've written a couple of duels in this chapter and I write about Harry's first girlfriend.**

 **Now, please understand that this is simply dating, the pairing you'll see in this chapter isn't meant to last and they will break up fairly soon. This goes for all the dates I write, if I feel that the Harry I'm writing doesn't fit with the character I had originally in mind then I will break them up. Simple as that.**

 **Besides that, please let me know if the kissing scene and date were written to your satisfaction. It's the first time I write about anything like this so every piece of advice is welcomed.  
I'll let you all know that I am a 19 year old male that parties a lot and I honestly jump from girl to girl at the moment. It might give you insight as to why I write romance the way I do. Harry won't be a man-whore, calm yourself, he'll have a steady relationship before he hits 18 or right after that.**

 **Duel scenes, these were fun to write for me, I think I did rather well but if you have suggestions please let me know.**

 **Oh right, is this story still T rated? I try to keep the cursing down, but I'm not sure if it's good enough. Please let me know!**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling does, or Lose yourself by eminem.**

* * *

Portkeys are uncomfortable, intercontinental ones are simply horrible. I look around after we landed, we arrived at the front garden of the Black family's beach house on the British Virgin Isles.

The property seems to have changed a bit since the last time I've been here, the house itself is still the same, but the front yard has improved drastically. Last time it was simply an extremely large garden with some trees and bushes, but now there is a quidditch pitch and is that a duelling platform? Awesome!

The house is 3 stories high and it's completely build out of wood, mostly white teak. The ground floor consists of the recreation room, the library, kitchen and the living room. The two other floors are mostly bedrooms and bathrooms and the study is on the first floor as well.  
Behind the house we've got our own private beach, I've been there once, the other times I went to public beaches because bikinis are one of the best muggle inventions out there.

"Welcome home Prongslet." I smile at Sirius, home, it's a nice word.

"So, are you going to teach me how to duel?" I ask Sirius and Remus. "Remus, you were a DADA teacher this year, you could teach me how to duel right?" I look up at him with big, wide eyes.

"What about me!" Sirius cries out indignantly, I merely arch an eyebrow at him. "Me and your Dad competed in European Duelling Circuit every summer after 5th year. James even went professional for a year after Hogwarts!" I actually didn't know that yet, Remus told me a lot about all the different pranks and about my parents' love life but I don't actually know what they did for a living.

"Great, so that means you'll train me? And now that I think of it, what did you and my parents do for a living?" I ask Sirius.

"I joined the fight against Voldemort immediately after school, I still had enough gold from my Uncle Alphard so I didn't need a real job. Your dad quit duelling after a year to focus on the war as well, he also managed the Potter family fortune. The Potters may not have been as rich as the Malfoys, the Blacks or the Longbottoms but a job was still more of a pastime than a necessity for the Potters. You'll gain access to your vaults once you become of age, they are frozen until then, you still gain interest and your shares still make money but it's inaccessible." Sirius explains to me. "And yes, we'll train you, these Islands might be part of Muggle Britain but they are part of the Magical US and they are much more lenient about underage magic." For some reason both Sirius and Remus gain a scary grin. Wonder why?

Ah well, I'm excited, I'll be able to use my affinities in a combat situation and duelling sounds awesome.

* * *

Everything hurts, oh Merlin, this isn't normal for an almost 14 year old. I've been 'training' with Sirius and Remus for the past week and it isn't what I expected. I thought I would learn new curses, cool shield and perhaps some battle transfiguration but no, I haven't cast a single spell during training so far, I'm not even allowed to use Raw Magic.

They put me in a circle, said I wasn't allowed to leave that circle and started casting stinging hexes at me while yelling 'Dodge!'. Okay they gave me valid reasons for this particular training method but that doesn't mean I'll like it!

In traditional professional duels you aren't allowed to leave your circle, these circles have a diameter of 2 meters and are drawn upon the duelling platform. There is a distance of 10 meters between your circle and your opponent's, you are allowed to transfigure anything but those 2 circles including the platform itself. If you leave the circle you receive a foul, two fouls and you're disqualified.  
There are other kind of duels, but those aren't as popular in Europe, which is where I would compete.

So, Sirius and Remus took it upon themselves to prepare me for this brand of duelling by making sure I get used to dodging spells in a circle. Bastards, that what they are.

Not everything is bad though, the muggle girls at the public beaches think I'm training for a martial arts tournament and are often willing to give me a massage if I give one in return. I feel my face heat up as I think about this one blonde girl who wanted a back massage without her bikini top getting in the way.

"Are you thinking about that Melissa girl again? She's the only one who manages to make you blush that hard." Sirius teases. "And she's 16! I'm so proud!" I glare at him, he and Remus have been making jokes about my massages for the entire week.

"Are you jealous Padfoot? I haven't seen you with any female company, weren't you supposed to be a ladies' man?" I smirk at him.

"You go to sleep fairly early because of our training and I use silencing charms Prongslet, I don't want to offend your virgin ears." I scowl at him, why does he always have a comeback?

"Anyway, I've come to tell you that you don't have training for the next two days, after that we're going to start with actual duel training." Sirius informs me.

"Finally! I was beginning to think I would be dodging stinging hexes for the entire summer! Oh right, can I invite my friends to come over for the next two days?" I haven't had a lot of time for my friends, I want to be able to join the 17 and Under Tournament in Berlin, it starts the 18th of August and ends the 20th. After that me, Siriufs and Remus are going to the Quidditch World Cup Final which starts the 22nd.

"Sure, you can floo-call them right now, then they can take a portkey tomorrow morning." Sirius responds.

I quickly head to the fireplace and make a floo-call to the Burrow and Longbottom Manor, I'm thinking about inviting Susan and Hannah as well but I decide not to. They are going to call me back once they asked their parents and in Neville's case his Grandmother.

I head outside and to a phone booth and press in Hermione's number.

"Granger household, Emma speaking."

"Hi, Mrs. Granger, I'm Harry, a friend of Hermione from Hogwarts, could you ask her to come to the phone?" I ask politely.

"Of course, I'll go get her." I hear her yelling Hermione's name and 5 seconds later Hermione squeals my name into the phone. "Harry! How are you? How's the British Virgin Isles? Isn't it hurricane season?" Merlin that girl can talk fast. "Breath 'Mione, deep breaths. I'm fine, the Isles are wonderful, and there are wards to protect us against any hurricane that might pass. I was wondering if you'd like to come over tomorrow, you could stay for 2 days if you wanted to." I respond.

"Oh Harry, I'm sorry but I'm going to France with my parents the day after tomorrow, we're already packing." She answers me.

"No problem 'Mione, enjoy your time with your parents." Just the boys it is.

* * *

It's 1 p.m., Neville and Ron should be arriving any second now. I told them to bring muggle swimwear, but they didn't have any, Sirius will transfigure it for them. I look forward to their reactions to the wonderful thing that is muggle bikinis.

Neville arrives first, he doesn't even stumble when he lands, he barely looks ruffled at all!

"Lo Nev, welcome to the Black beach house, the next two days you will learn the wonders of muggle swimwear." I tell him with a shit eating grin on my face. I asked Sirius what purebloods wear as swimming gear, apparently they wear these old fashion one piece suits that basically hide every curve.

"What's so special about muggle swimwear?" He asks, I just grin at him. When he opens his mouth to ask another question we're interrupted by Ron being launched our way. Finally someone who is worse with portkeys than me!

"Sup Ron, welcome to the Black beach house, let's go, I want to give you two a tour of the house and then we're going to the beach." I give them a short tour and tell them about the duelling tournament and that we're going to the World Championship. Ron's going as well, his dad got top-box tickets, Sirius says that the World Cup is a lot more fun if you sit with the masses, the atmosphere is supposed to be amazing.

"Yes, we'll play quidditch on my 'totally wicked' pitch sometime during these 2 days, don't worry Ron." The guy takes quidditch to seriously, he started drooling as soon as I showed him the quidditch pitch up close. "Now, are you ready to go to the beach?"  
_

It's quite amusing to see both Neville and Ron gape at the scantily clad muggle girls, I will admit my first reaction was roughly the same.

"Close your mouths, you're going to catch flies." I say with a smirk.

"Harry, mate, is this real? This isn't a prank from the twins or anything?" Ron asks disbelievingly.

"Nope, this is simply the muggle world, I told you muggles have the best swimwear imaginable?" I tell him.

Neville's eyes have glazed over, what's he looking at? Oh, he's looking at the 25 year old topless brunette bombshell, she's been here all week. Sirius had to slap me in the face to get me out of my trance when I first saw her, guess I'll give Neville the same privilege. *Slap!*

"Ouch, thanks Harry, I needed that." Neville mutters, I laugh and slap him on the back.

"It's alright Neville, I had the same reaction and it looks like Ron does too, do you want the honours?" He nods and slaps Ron out of his trance. Now I know why Sirius was so amused, this is hilarious!

She's coming over here! Why would she do that?  
"Excuse me, you're Harry right?" The bombshell asks me. I feel my face heat up and I sputter out an embarrassed "Yes."

"Your godfather told me about you, you're just as cute as he said! Can you ask him if it's okay for me to come over tonight?" Oh Sirius, you dog!

"Ye-yeah, I'll ask him." I barely manage to keep eye contact while answering her. She smiles at me, pats me on the head and walks off with a sway in those delicious hips.

As soon as she's out of hearing distance I turn to Nev and Ron with a huge grin on my face.  
"Aren't muggles amazing?" I get two nods in return.

* * *

I'm standing on the duel platform, wand in my right hand and ready to summon Raw Magic to my left on a moment's notice.

I bow to my opponent, as I straighten I go over my starting combo once more, I'm ready.

The duel begins, I open with _"Avis"_ , I conjure 5 small birds and send them to my opponent, a wide area bludgeoning spell intercepts them before the halfway point killing them instantly.

In the meantime I managed to conjure two big boa snakes and order them to flank my opponent, I barely dodge two conjured ropes and bat away a stunning spell with a Raw Magic shield on my left hand. I'm pretty happy about that one, it took me a long time to get the density and power right to deflect spells. I retaliate by snapping of 2 quick stunning spells and a blast of Raw Magic, I really need to work on Non-verbal spells, saying them takes too much time. My snakes got themselves some friends, a horde of rats attack each one.

My opponent catches one of the stunners on his wand and reflects it back at me while dodging the blast of Raw Magic and slapping the other stunner away with a duellist shield on his left hand, I still think my Raw Magic variant is better. I snap of a quick disarming charm hoping to get lucky but it doesn't work out.  
He follows up with over 4 small but irritating spells, itching hex, jelly-legs, nosebleed and the slug vomiting curse. All of them will impair my ability to perform at 100% but dodging them all isn't possible and a _Protego_ won't stand against those 5 spells, it will break after the stunner and itching hex.  
I expand the shield on my left arm to cover my entire front, it's draining but I'll manage. After the last spell hits I blast my shield at him, it acts like a massive banisher, try and dodge that! I follow up with the only lightning spell I can use from this distance, I cry out " _Fulgis!"_ The spell takes a while to charge but the banisher provides me with enough time.

The spell hits my opponent's shield and I look anxiously at the smoke covering his side of the platform. Suddenly I feel something touching my left leg, I look down and see one of the ropes my opponent fired at me in the beginning of the duel grabbing my legs and trying to tie me up. As I fire a cutting spell at the rope I suddenly black out.

I wake up with a groan and see Sirius looking at me with a smile.

"Welcome back sleeping beauty! What did you learn?" He asks me with a chipper tone.

"Never look away from your opponent without putting up a defence." I groan out, I got hit with a stunning spell while firing that cutter, talk about embarrassing!

"It's alright Pup, you're only 14. I haven't seen a fourteen year old with a duellist shield before, be proud of what you can do. Don't feel bad about which you can't." Sirius says wisely.

"I think the fall messed up my head, you actually made sense there for a moment!" I say to him.

"Real funny Prongslet, but I'm serious, you can give a O.W.L. graduate a run for his money. Your transfiguration needs work and you simply have to learn non-verbal spells but besides those two points you're doing rather well. You might just make it past the preliminaries."

"Geez, that's comforting, I might just make it in the real Tournament." I say while pouting.

"Sirius is right you know, for a student that's not even in his 4th year passing the preliminaries is quite the achievement." Remus interjects from his chair.

"I know, I know, it's just so annoying that Sirius can beat within a minute without even trying at all!" My response is met with chuckles.

"We're war veterans and I duelled for 2 years at school, what did you expect? Beating me will require hard work, but you might just manage by your 7th year if you keep growing at the same rate." Sirius informs me.

"Fine, when are we leaving to Berlin? The tournament starts in 2 days right?" I ask Remus.

"We're leaving tomorrow afternoon so go pack your stuff." He answers

"Alright, thanks Remus."

* * *

The training was hard, no matter how good I am at my affinities they won't do much in a duel just yet, I don't know enough spells and my shields are too weak.

Conjuration and transfiguration are also major parts in these duels. Animals corpses are often scattered around the platform after a long match, the same can be said about ropes, chains, rubber discs and rubber balls. Nothing lethal is allowed in regulated matches so that means no metal or heavy pieces of rock.

The ' _serpensortia'_ spell on the other hand works extremely well for me, other wizards often need to place a compulsion on conjured or transfigured animals, but I can just give a command in parseltongue and they'll do as I say. I hope my opponents in the tournament will use snakes against me, it should provide an easy win. The shock factor of their conjuration or transfiguration turning against them and me speaking parseltongue should provide a window of opportunity for a quick stunning spell.

I got some nice birthday gifts, a book on duelling history from Hermione, a book from Remus on popular spells for duels, some sweets from Ron, Susan and Hannah, a cake from Mrs. Weasley, a professional wand holster from Neville and a full set of duelling robes from Sirius!

* * *

I'm fully clothed in my duelling robes, my match should start in 5 minutes, I look at the stands trying to spot my friends, Sirius and Remus. Ron, Neville, Hermione, Susan and Hannah all made it. Their encouraging smiles make me feel a bit better, but I'm still nervous, my palms are sweaty, my knees weak and my arms are heavy. Oh for Merlin's sake, I'm corrupted by muggle music.

I take a glance at my opponent, Sirius provided me with a file on all of my possible opponents so I know that my opponent is from France. His name is Mathias Bonnel, 16 year old student at the French wizarding school Beauxbatons. He just finished his 5th year, his O.W.L. scores were average for the most part but with an O in Charms.

"The next match at platform 4 is between Mathias Bonnel, age 16, from Beauxbatons, France and Harry Potter, age 14, from Hogwarts, Britain. Will the competitors please get in their circles?"

Alright, let's go, no holding back. I stand up and stride confidently to my part of the duelling platform, my opponent sneers at me, are we going to thrash talk before the duel? Is that allowed?

"Are the competitors ready?" I nod at the referee, Mathias does the same before yelling at me. "Don't think your title as the Boy-Who-Lived will get you a free win outside of Britain! A little boy like you shouldn't even be here!" Oh he's going down, I simply give him a withering glare and bow when the referee asks us to.

"Begin!"

I don't feel like dragging this out, let's start with a bang. _"Bombarda!"_ I turn my body sideways to avoid his disarming charm while he needs to summon a strong shield to stop my explosion charm. He isn't taking me seriously, might as well take advantage of that.  
I conjure 2 snakes, poisonous ones this time, they don't have lethal venom but it will hurt, a lot. _$Flank the human, bite him when possible$_ I put up a shield to block the stunner and the silencing charm he sends my way. He seems to know I can't cast non-verbally, luckily enough Sirius drilled the silent _'Finite'_ in my head, so I should be fine either way.

Time to put him on the defensive, 2 quick stunners and a length of rope leave my wand, he blocks the stunners with a shield and banishes the rope back at me with a stunner of his own behind it.  
A cutting charm takes care of the rope, time to make a statement here. I slap away the stunner with my Raw Magic duellist shield and retaliate harshly, my snakes are keeping him busy at the moment, let's see if I can finish it. I send two blast of magic at him, conjure 3 birds with _Avis_ and banish them at him, there's no time to waste with them flying the distance.

He notices the danger, he decapitates my last snake and takes control of the birds flight pattern to intercept the blasts of magic. Too bad he had to take his eyes of me and give me time to prepare my next spell, my wand is sparkling with lightning, _"Fulgis!"_. He looks up at me, eyes wide with surprise and a bit of fear, he shouts out an advanced shield charm _"Contego!"_

Not going to happen, I've tasted victory and I want it! I send out my Raw Magic banisher at him, conjure two lengths of rope and a venomous snake and banish them at my opponent, I hope the ropes camouflage the snake. A stunner and a disarming charm finish my combo.

His shield managed to stop my lightning spell but my banisher breaks through and pushes him back to the edge of the circle. He cuts one of the ropes and ducks beneath the snake and the other rope, they land behind a couple meters behind him. A _Protego_ blocks my spells but just barely, he's starting to run on fumes, the _Contego_ must have taken a lot out of him. Time to end it

 _"Accio snake"_ I smirk at him as my poisonous snake collides with his back, his eyes wide with shock but it's too late. The snake has bitten him in his shoulder, his face consorts into an expression of pain and he physically yanks the snake off his body. He never even notices the duo of stunners flying at him.

* * *

"Good job Harry." Sirius says proudly. "Your next match is against Lidia Alekseeva, a girl that's only a year older than you. She's starting her 5th year at Durmstrang, so be careful if you see spells you don't recognize, they might be a bit Dark so a _Protego_ won't always be enough. Dodge them or use your duellist shield. We don't know a lot about her besides that since she hasn't taken her O.L.W.'s yet."

That was informative, I absentmindedly make some small talk with Ron and Neville about how cool my lightning spell was while I try to come up with a strategy. She must know about my Raw Magic and my lightning spell so I won't get to surprise her with that, she might also know about my usage of snakes but it's possible she overlooks that.

My conjuration is pretty bad, conjuring rope, birds and snakes is all I can do, it's to theory heavy to just pick up in one summer. Transfiguration is out as well, nothing I can do will help me.  
I might be able to scratch a rune in the platform but all I can think of is Ýr _(Protection)_ to stop some of her spells. I guess I'll have to overpower her like I did to my last opponent, not exactly stylish but it should get the job done.

My next match is announced, duelling platform 6 this time, I receive a final round of good luck, Susan does so with a kiss on my cheek, and head to the platform.

I draw my wand and stand in my circle, there is no thrash talking this time, we simply stare at each other during our bow. Masks of concentration in place on both our faces.

"Begin!"

She takes the initiative with a bone breaking curse, _Ossis Effergo_ , and a paralyzing curse, _Occísus Lacerti_ , she's not playing around. I dodge the bone breaking curse and deflect the paralyzing curse with my duellist shield, if she's using dangerous spells then I'll do the same.

I fire two _Reductos_ at her, one aimed at her feet, the other at her shoulders, not lethal but it will break the bone. She blocks the one aimed at her body but she's still showered with debris from the one aimed at her feet. A quick stunner and disarming charm is all I'm able to get off before she recovers and launches a jet of fire at me, damn, my _Aquamenti_ won't stop that! I might be able to use this to my advantage though, I fire a _Reducto_ through the jet of flame straight at her before I roll out of the way. I still got signed but you can't win everything. As I look back at my opponent I see her holding her ribs, it looks like my _Reducto_ went unnoticed through the flames, only a glancing hit but I'll take anything I can get.

We exchange stunners, bone breakers and explosive curses for a while, I need to end this soon, some debris hit me in the face after an explosive curse and I'm starting to tire.

I fire off an _Aquamenti_ that she blocks easily enough but there is a pathway of water between us now, and she's standing in it. I kneel and use the taser spell, _Scintillus Ulcer,_ on the water in front of me, the lightning is conducted through the water straight at my opponent, that has to hurt. As I'm kneeling I see another bone breaker coming straight at me, there's no time to put up a shield or even call up on Raw Magic so I throw up my left arm.

A sickening snap is heard through the area as we both scream out in pain, I'm not giving up though, I keep pumping power into my lightning spell while my left arm hangs uselessly at my side. The smell of flesh burning starts to appear in the air, but she's still trying to aim her wand at me. A second later she can't control her muscle movements anymore and drops her wand. I quickly stop the spell. _"Accio Wand."_ Her wand flies from her side of the platform into my wand hand.

"Winner, Harry Potter!"

* * *

I cradle my broken arm as I enter the medical building, it's a clean break but it still hurts a lot, a simple spell and my bone is set, I love magic! My friends, Sirius and Remus come into the room and offer their congratulations.

"Nicely done Harry, you made it past the preliminaries!" Remus beams at me.

I grin at him and share a high-five with Ron. "Only downside is that you are facing one of the semi-finalists from last year next. She turned 17 the 11th of August, so this is her last 17 and Under Tournament." Sirius informs me.

"C'mon Sirius, couldn't you have let me enjoy my win for at least an hour!" I whine while Sirius laughs at me.

"Cheer up Harry, you're the youngest person that made it past the preliminaries, you're the only 14 year old out of 126 people!" Susan says. Okay that does cheer me up, I'm in the top 126, and there were almost 500 competitors! Tomorrow I have to duel the former semi-finalist but today I'm going to enjoy my victories before my friends go back to Britain tomorrow to prepare for the World Cup.

* * *

I stand in front of my opponent and Merlin, is she beautiful, Sirius warned me that she's part-Veela and that she would be able to win without casting a single spell if I don't keep my head in the game. Now I know what he meant, I shake off the cobwebs that gathered inside my head by physically shaking my head like a dog. It works surprisingly enough.

We bow to each other and take position. She's most likely going to use plenty of fire spells, all Veela and part-Veela have strong fire affinities.

"Begin!" No holding back, she didn't just win her matches with her allure, she's a vicious duellist as well.

I launch 3 _Reductos_ in quick succession, she seems surprised for a moment before she blocks them with a _Contego_. Show off, a _Protego_ would have worked as well.

She retaliates with 3 conjured rubber balls and banishes them at me, I guess she hid a spell behind each of them so I have to be careful. I send my Raw Magic banisher at the balls, if she didn't put anything more powerful than a disarming charm behind them my banisher should deflect those as well.

It seems that I'm in luck, there was a disarming charm hidden behind the left ball, but a stunner and a skin burning curse behind the other ones and they are still coming at me. My opponent has her hands full with my banisher and her rubber balls so I can safely stop these curses.  
I use a double layered _Protego_ to stop the spells, it's a substitute for the _Contego_ since I can't use that yet, it's draining but it works.

I start preparing my _Fulgis_ spell, I'm always a bit unsure about using it at full power since it can be lethal but this witch seems like she can handle it. I stop her piercing and cutting curses with a shield of Raw Magic, it's my strongest shield, shaped as a spear pointing toward my opponent with me standing in it. It's draining, especially since my control isn't good enough for this kind of thing but it withstands her barrage of spells. She's fired quite a bit at me already, I counted 4 piercers, 3 cutters and 2 gouts of flame. I'm close to collapsing and my shield is starting to crack but my _Fulgis_ is ready, my wand is surrounded in lightning.

 _"FULGIS!"_ I roar at the top of my lungs as I drop my shield, it's a dangerous move and I take 2 piercers to my legs and a cutting charm across my left arm because of my foolishness. As my legs give out underneath me I see my lightning bolt heading towards her _Magus Contego_ shield, damn that's a professional shield. With a resounding BOOM my lightning bolt hits the pillar of energy right before my world goes black thanks to a stunner to my head.

* * *

I wake up with a groan, as I look around I notice that I'm in a hospital bed and my legs feel like they're burning. I see Sirius and Remus sitting beside me, both of them are asleep and Sirius is drooling on Remus' shoulder, I start chuckling, I need a camera!

My chuckling must have louder than I thought since they woke up.

"Hello guys, how long was I out?" I ask

"You've been asleep for more than 24 hours, the finals are going to start soon, you really pushed yourself you know? You had a minor magical exhaustion and the wounds on your legs actually went halfway through the bone." I flinch as Sirius says all that, having your bones pierced hurts is never fun.

"Who's going to duel in the finals?" I ask Remus.

"Your last opponent, Fleur Delacour, is facing last's year champion Antonio Ponte, age 17, from an Italian duelling school. It should be a nice match." Remus tells me.

* * *

It was a nice match, Delacour won eventually but it was one of the longer duels in the tournament. Ponte was a strong opponent and it could have gone either way, both were pretty heavily wounded at the end and because of that Ponte couldn't keep his defence against her Veela allure up any longer. A bit of an anticlimactic ending but the duel itself made up for it.

The quidditch world cup was great, watching Krum fly is amazing. Me, Sirius and Remus missed the Death Eater attack luckily enough, we took a portkey to France a couple of hours after the match there was an amazing party in some rich Heiress her manor. And Remus managed to get us an invite, Sirius was so jealous! He kept going on about the rough werewolf look stealing all his rightful attention, me and Remus had a good laugh with that.

I hear from Ron that he was in the middle of the action, had his wand stolen and everything. He got his wand back eventually but someone from the Ministry accused him from casting the Dark Mark because his wand was found where it was cast. Bloody stupid if you ask me.

Sirius informed me about the Tri-Wizard Tournament, I have enough action with duelling and quidditch so I'll sit that one out.

Me and Neville are waiting for Ron and Hermione to show up, as usual the Weasleys are running late, as we're waiting on them we're discussing the quidditch world cup and my last duel.

"It was a disaster mate, she completely destroyed me! I ended up with a galleon sized hole in each leg and a deep cut in my arm. Hang on, Sirius recorded my matches with omnioculars, they can only record up to 10 minutes, so I have a pair for each match." I open my trunk and search for the pair of omnioculars used to record my match against Fleur Delacour. "Here you go mate, you can see me get destroyed over and over again."

Oh, there they are, the red headed legion just came through the portal and with 4 minutes to spare, rather impressive if you ask me. I open our compartment door so they can find us easier and fall in an easy conversation with Neville, the guy really grew on me in the past year, he's a great friend.

Ron and Hermione join us and ask me for an in-depth report on my duel so I show them my omnioculars. As Ron looks at the recording he starts drooling a bit, oh boy if he ever meets her in real life he's going to be reduced to a drooling wreck! I will admit I acted foolishly at the World Cup when the Bulgarian Veelas started dancing but that was just because there were so many of them.

Ron then launches into an explanation about the Death Eater attack which he explains with wide arm gestures while Hermione rolls her eyes when he over exaggerates about something. It's pretty funny to watch.

As I'm about to explain the Tri-Wizard Tournament to them our compartment door opens and Draco Malfoy steps in.

"Do we have to do this every train ride Malfoy? It's rather annoying." I roll my eyes at him.

He acts like I didn't say anything, rather annoying if you ask me. "Are you going to join it Potter? Or how about you Weasley, you could use the money." He sneers at Ron.

I sigh and give Ron a sign to calm down. "If you're talking about the Tri-Wizard Tournament then no, I won't be joining it. I'm busy enough with quidditch and duelling. Is there anything else Malfoy?" I'm really just tired of him, after duelling against talented people of my own age Malfoy just seems so insignificant.

"You duel Potter? Don't make me laugh, I bet you don't even know the proper procedure." He says haughtily.

I share a look with my friends, how doesn't he know about my duelling adventure this summer? My performance was published in both the Daily Prophet and Teen Witch Weekly. Ron puts our thoughts into words.

"Did you live under a rock this summer Malfoy? Harry's duelling performance was smeared across the media."

Malfoy sputters as he searches for a comeback, it looks like he found one, he just put on his 'I am superior' look, "I only check up until the quarter finals, everything below that isn't worth my time."

"Like you could defeat Harry in a duel, I bet you wouldn't even last two minutes!" Go Neville! Show him who's boss!

"Shut up you squib! You probably can't even do a disarming charm!" Malfoy glares at Neville, I've had enough. I extend my empty left hand toward him and blast him and his two silent companions out of the compartment with my Raw Magic banisher, I love that thing!

"Would you mind casting some locking charms on the door 'Mione? I'm not that good with them." I shake Hermione out of her stupor with my question.

"Harry! You attacked a fellow student before the year has even begun! You shouldn't do that!" She complains, but she's still casting the locking charms while she's not scolding me. Ah, reliable 'Mione.

* * *

I absolutely love how our new Defence professor ruined Dumbledore's speech, the dramatic entrance just as Dumbledore was going to announce the Tri-Wizard tournament was beautiful!

The exact details of how the tournament is going to go haven't been released yet, but Dumbledore did announce that there is going to be the individual, traditional tournament and an interschool quidditch competition alongside a knowledge bowl.

I'm happy they haven't completely cancelled quidditch, Fred and George almost had a heart attack when the Headmaster announced that the interhouse quidditch cup was cancelled.

Hermione is still raving on about 'those poor house-elves', I think she's completely wrong, I've seen that they love to work and more importantly that they are bloody dangerous when they act on their own. I like Dobby, I really do, but he almost killed me!

* * *

I turn around and backhand Malfoy's curse at Crabbe, like he could ever get the drop on me, it was so obvious he was going to try and curse me. I made one remark about his mother and he goes ballistic. On the other hand he insults Ron's father not even 5 minutes before that! Stupid twat...

Crabbe's face breaks out in boils a flick of my wrist later and my wand shoots in my hand, before I can curse Malfoy there is a loud bang and Malfoy turns into a ferret. Oh I'm looking forward to Defence.

I take it back, Defence was horrible, Neville is still shaking after seeing that Cruciatus curse, I heard the story about Nev's parents from Sirius. The class might have been informative but the professor should have been more sensative.

* * *

Whoop! I must have a huge shit eating grin on my face, I just asked Susan Bones out to Hogsmeade and she said yes! I turn to Neville and see that he has a grin on his face as well.

"Did she say yes as well?" I ask him.

"Yup." He pops the 'p' loudly. "What are you going to do? I'm planning on a picnic at the lake and then a trip to Hogsmeade." Not a bad idea Nev.

"I'm taking Susan to Hogsmeade earlier than normal through one of the secret passages, and get brunch at the Three Broomsticks and after that a trip through Hogsmeade." I tell him, normally you can go to Hogsmeade at noon and you have to be back by 7 p.m..

* * *

"Hi Susan, you look great!" Always give a compliment, I'm following Sirius' advice for now.

"Thank you Harry, why did you want to meet up so early? We aren't allowed to go to Hogsmeade for another 90 minutes."

"Just follow me." I tell her with a smile, I take her hand and lead her to the statue of the one-eyed witch.

As we enter the Three Broomsticks I suddenly realize that Madam Rosmerta knows that we shouldn't be here yet, I really hope she won't rat us out. Susan must have thought of the same thing since she's giving me a worried look.

"Good morning, could we get a brunch for two?" I pray she will just go with it.

She looks at us for a moment before she sighs. "You are just like your father, he did the exact same thing in his 5th year as you're doing now. Go sit in a booth in the back of the building, I'll make sure your professors won't see you two." I give her a grateful nod and lead Susan to our table.

We have a great time, the food is amazing and we're laughing about my father's antics while he was in school. Both me and Susan lost our parents during the war, so it's easier for me to talk to her about it. Before we know it we're outside of the Three Broomsticks and walking hand in hand down Hogsmeade.

Her fingers are intertwined with mine and her head is resting on my shoulder, my arm is squishes against her breast, but you won't hear me complain about it.

As we walk into the book shop I see Neville and Hannah holding hands in the same way as us, I flash Neville a grin and a wink and ask Susan if she wants to say hi to them. She answers me with a nod.

"Lo Neville, Hannah." I greet them. Susan and Hannah branch off for a moment and start giggling. I don't even want to know what they are discussing.

"You looked comfortable Harry." Neville says with a smile, I focus my attention on Neville again.

"So did you." I answer with the same smile in place. "I was thinking of taking Susan to the Shrieking Shack next, I told you about how it isn't really haunted right?" He nods at my question.

"I think it will be a good end of a date, tell her the story of Remus and then head down the secret passage that is in the house." I explain. "If you want you could go meet up with us there in about an hour, I'm honestly hoping I can get a good snog in while we wait for you." I finish with a grin.

"Merlin Harry, Sirius has influenced you a lot! What happened to the shy boy hero?"Neville asks jokingly. "But yeah, that sounds good."

"Puberty, a change of environment and one near death experience too many." I say semi-seriously. "But what about you? You aren't nearly as shy as a year ago!" I exclaim.

"You happened mate, you, Hermione, Ron, Hannah and Susan got me out of my shell, you gave me some self confidence. I can't thank you enough for that." He answers sincerely.

After that male bonding moment Hannah and Susan come back over, I wonder if they heard anything.

"Ready to go Sue?" I ask my date, she nods and grabs my hand again. We say goodbye to Nev and Hannah and head for the Shrieking Shack.

An hour later I'm tongue wrestling with Susan with my back resting against a tree trunk and her straddling my hips. I have my hands on her waist and she is gripping my hair. A cough interrupts us right as I'm about to put my hands on her delicious bum.

I shoot Neville a withering glare as Susan jumps off me with an embarrassed squeak, I quickly shift my robes to hide my reaction to Susan straddling me and get up.

We head into the Shack and follow the secret passage, during the walk I eventually walk next to Nev and grumble to him. "Couldn't you have come a couple of minutes later? I was just about to move my hands somewhere else." Neville actually snorts at me, little bastard!

"Please Harry, if you didn't do that within an hour then you wouldn't have done it at all. You should have just done the same thing I did, move those hands within the first 10 minutes."

I grumble some more but after a minute I catch up with Susan and wrap my arm around her shoulders, the smile she sends me makes me forget all about Neville one upping me.

We arrive at the Whomping Willow so I quickly conjure a snake and instruct it to push down on the knot to immobilize the Willow.

We split up after we get out of the secret passage, no need to watch each other's goodbye snog now is there? Neville walks Hannah to her dorm while me and Susan hang back at the stairs.

"I had a great time today Harry." Susan says softly while walking up closer to me. I can feel my heartbeat speeding up again. I meet her halfway and encircle her waist with my arms as she does the same with my neck.

"So did I, Sue." I close the distance between our lips, I relish in the feeling of our lips locking together. I softly lick her bottom lip to ask for entrance which she immediately grants, she tastes like strawberries which is kind of funny since she has strawberry blonde hair.  
I brush the spot right behind her upper front teeth and I'm rewarded with a soft moan, I decide to follow Neville's advice and lower my hands to her butt. She gives a small squeak but that soon turns into a moan as I give a little squeeze, Neville is a genius.

We separate a while later, both a bit out of breath, I give her one last quick kiss on the lips and say goodbye. I walk up the stairs and I'm sure I got the goofiest grin on my face I've ever seen in my life.

* * *

The weeks pass quickly and I enjoy them to the fullest, I train my affinities, learn new spells and have mock duels against Ron and Neville at the same time. But most importantly I spend quite some time with my girlfriend, we haven't gone much farther than some light petting but I don't particularly care, I'm having a great year so far.

Right now I'm standing in front of the castle with my arm around Susan's shoulders watching the headmasters of the competing schools talk to each other. As we head inside I feel a familiar light-headedness, I shake it off and look around at what might have caused it, I quickly spot the source.

Fleur Delacour, the champion of the Berlin 17 and Under duellist tournament is walking in front of me. We're going to have a rematch before the year is over, I'm sure of it. Susan pokes me in the arm and I shake my head at her. It isn't important anyway.

"May the best Wizards and Witches be chosen!" Dumbledore finishes his speech with that final line and the hall bursts into applause. The Goblet of Fire is placed on a pedestal and Dumbledore draws the age line himself, the Weasley twins are already discussing their plans to get past it.  
I share a grin with Ron, Hermione and Neville, watching the twins at work should be funny.

* * *

 **A.N.: Next chapter will show the choosing of the champions, the reactions of our 2 Hufflepuff girls to Cedric having to share his glory, Ron being a bit of a twat and Dumbledore taking an active role in Harry's education! Mentor!Dumbledore will officially begin**


	5. Goblets and Clues

**A.N.: 8000 words, MERLIN, that's a lot of words. I also got 29 reviews, 94 favorites and 133 follows with 1859 visitors. I'm pretty happy about that, so thank you all.**

 **Now this chapter has quite a lot going on in it. Harry gets chosen, his peers react to it. And one of the first major differences in the tournament is introduced.**

 **I always thought it was incredibly stupid that they were actually planning to send 4 teenagers unprepared against dragons. If the headmasters, teachers, other judges and other coworkers actually swore** **strong enough oaths they would at least have two deaths on their hands. And I'm fairly sure none of the competitors would have gotten their clue. Which would result in a very short tournament.**

 **So, in this fic the oaths are strong, the teachers can still teach but the headmasters can barely give advice on anything that has to do with magical ability. Talking about the tournament tasks against someone who hasn't sworn the same oath is physically impossible for them.**

 **To balance this fact I introduced a mini task where the better scoring competitors can get small clues. Single word clues even.**

 **This will help the champions prepare but not tell them outright what they are facing. There will still be a surprise factor in the 1st task(Next Chapter) but they won't be going in completely blind like originally intended.**

 **I hope everyone realized that the writer of** ** _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ is written by Dumbledore? Brian W. Percival are his middle names. **

**The next chapter will take a bit longer, my exams are starting**

 **Enjoy, and please let me know what you think.**

 **PS: Question for you all: I don't really curse a lot in this story. But when does a story turn M-rated? I honestly don't know how much I can curse before I have to change my rating.**

* * *

I chuckle as I once again remember the twins trying to get past the age-line, those beards are so hilarious on anyone but Dumbledore.

At the moment I'm trying to get past the age-line myself It's not that I want to enter, not at all but this age-line is an incredibly strong ward and I want to study it.  
Half of Gryffindor is watching me work and I'm fairly sure the entire school knows what I'm trying right about now so I suspect that I won't be able to finish my work. It's really a fascinating piece of magic, normal age lines are simply a variation of the Ýr _(Protection)_ / Ós _(Wizard)_ / Ár _(Health, youth)_ runic array. But this one is so much more complicated. I've spotted multiple protection runes, locking runes, power runes and I'm fairly sure the stone underneath the Goblet is enchanted as well giving it another line of defence.

Well, time to try and break through, I really doubt it will work. I might be advanced but I'm only taking my O.W.L. at the end of this year and hopefully my N.E.W.T at the end of next year. Dumbledore on the other hand is a genius!

I gather Raw Magic in my right hand and start etching runes in front of me, I start of by mirroring the basic array, Ýr/Ós/Ár, I then enforce that mirror array with Hagall _(Destruction)_ , Ór _(Power)_ and Týr _(Sharpness, pierce)_. I am not trying to break the entire ward down, that would be impossible for someone of my skill level. I'm trying to create a hole with a diameter of 5 inches.  
That should be enough for Fred and George to put their names in the Goblet, if I can break through the age-line then they'll owe me a favour. I'm planning to use that favour to force them to accept some galleons as an investment for their joke shop, living with two Marauders for 2 months makes you appreciate the art of pranking.

I start pouring power into my runes, as I lift my head I look straight into the twinkling eyes of Dumbledore, shouldn't he be trying to stop me? My runes glow in a soft purple but I'm fairly sure everyone can feel the magic hanging in the air. I focus my magic through the mirrored array, into the destruction rune, after that into the power rune and finally into the pierce rune before I plunge the energy into the age line.

"Bloody hell Harry! You're doing it" Ron yells at me, and he's right, there is a small hole being drilled into the age bubble, line isn't really the right word anyway.

"'Mione, cast a silencing charm over the crowd will you? I need to concentrate." I bite out with clenched teeth. The hole is growing, it's an entire inch right now. The sound of the crowd goes away, thank you Hermione! I keep pouring power into my array and the hole keeps growing, two inches already! Three inches... Three and a half... four inches!

"Fred, George, get ready! One more inch, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep this open." I shout out at the twins. And there it is, a hole in the age bubble, 5 inches wide. I use my right hand to etch a mirrored Naudr _(Open, Unlock)_ on my array to keep that circle open for as long as I put power in it. It's still eating away at my reserves at high speeds though.

Fred has his arm in the age line and doesn't get blown back. "Alright! Go Harry!" George cheers.  
As Fred moves his hand to the Goblet, his hand is only a few inches away from the flame and... his hand bounces off a shield.

"Damn it! I should have seen this coming, there is a backup ward to close off the Goblet of Fire if the age line is compromised." I sigh, I stop putting power into the runes

"A worthy effort but alas, the experience of age defeats the enthusiasm of youth, at least for now." Dumbledore says with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes.

"Stupid smug Headmaster, who puts a double layered ward like that over a school tournament." I grumble as I walk through the crowds with the twins at my side.

"Cheer up Harrikins, he's the greatest wizard of our age, what did you expect." Fred tries to cheer me up. Wait, is that a white beard slowly growing on his face? I snicker, loudly.

"What's so funny Harry? George?" Fred asks as George begins to laugh as well. "I'm growing another beard aren't I?" I nod and Fred sighs as his shoulders slump in defeat.

"Well, you still got through the age-line, so I guess we owe you one. See you late Harry!" George shouts as he leads Fred to the infirmary.

* * *

"Are you going to try out for the Hogwarts quidditch team?" Ron asks me.

"Yeah, I'm not really stressed out about it, Diggory is the only competition for the seeker spot but he might be the Champion. Malfoy should have never been Slytherin seeker in the first place, Terrence Higgs was ten times better and he only graduated last year. Cho Chang is decent, but she hasn't won against me or Diggory even once so she won't be chosen either." I answer him.

"Don't worry Harry, it'll be an almost all Gryffindor team, let me tell you that! We got the best seeker, the most beautiful chasers and the most dashing, handsome beaters of the school." George interjects.

Dumbledore clears his throat and the hall falls silent, it's rather impressive how he does that. "The Goblet of Fire is ready to make its choice!" Hushes whispers are exchanged everywhere, I know for a fact that Angelina is hoping to be chosen, same with Roger Davies, the captain of Ravenclaw's quidditch team.

"The champion from Beauxbatons is..." I should have made a bet on this, it's a no brainer. "Fleur Delacour!" Polite clapping rose from all the tables, her classmates don't look particularly happy about the Goblet's choice, there must be a story behind that.

The flames of the Goblet lights up again and the hall falls silent once more "The champion from Durmstrang is... Viktor Krum!" Roaring arose from the Durmstrang brigade.

"Damn, I wanted to fly against him!" I whine, I really hoped he wouldn't be his school's champion.

"The champion from Hogwarts is... Cedric Diggory!" The Hufflepuff table broke into applause, they are showing their loyalty and friendship right now.

The Headmaster is going through his speech, just as he was about to explain the first event of the Tri-Wizard Tournament the Goblet bursts into flames once more. Oh I have a bad feeling about this.  
Dumbledore plucks the last piece of parchment out of the sky and opens it dramatically, oh c'mon just open the damn thing, we both already know that my name is going to be on it.  
My shoulders slump dejectedly and I sigh in defeat, my friends give me a look and I was just about to tell them my suspicions as Dumbledore calls out my name.

"Harry Potter!" Fuck, damn it all, oh great Ron's looking at me like I kicked his puppy, Susan is giving me this betrayed look and Angelina looks like she is about to blow a fuse. I stand up with my shoulders hunched over and head to the holding room, whispers arise about how I cheated my way in. They actually have some sort of proof, I did manage to pierce through the age line, I lock eyes with the Headmaster and his eyes don't have their customary twinkle in them.

I open the door and head in, I guess one calm year is my limit at this school. "Harry? Do they want us back in the Great Hall?" I shake my head and open my mouth to explain but the door burst open and the Professors walk in.

"Harry, did you put your name into the Goblet." Dumbledore asks me. I give him my best deadpan look and answer him in a loud voice.

"Like I don't have enough on my plate already, duelling practice, my Runes O.W.L. at the end of the year and interschool quidditch. Let's not forget the fact that I've only had one year in Hogwarts so far that didn't almost kill me. Why would I enter this bloody competition?"

Snape snorts, loudly. "Like father, like son. Your godfather probably made your attitude even worse, you are nothing but an attention seeking liar Potter."

I snarl at him. "Shut up Snivellus, you know nothing about me!" I'm not in the mood for these games, I want to go to my room and use the two-way mirror to contact Sirius and figure out what happened. "Everyone saw me trying to break through the protections on the Goblet but everyone also saw me fail, that was 5 hours ago. Do you really think I'm such a genius that I managed to break through the second ward that Dumbledore set up in such a small amount of time? I'm flattered Snape."

I tune everyone out, they are all shouting about me being in the tournament, Snape keeps trying to convince everyone I'm a liar and the other Headmasters are trying to get their own second champion. That idea has some merit actually. I clear my throat loudly and they actually look at me, it works!

"Can we get on with the interrogation? I didn't put my name in nor did I ask anyone else to put my name in. I'm willing to take Veritaserum to confirm that." That gives them a nice shock!

"I'm afraid we can't do that Harry, using Veritaserum on minors is illegal." Dumbledore says to me.

"Isn't there another way to prove that I didn't enter myself or asked anyone else to enter my name for me?" I ask Dumbledore.

"I'm afraid that there isn't a legal solution, Unbreakable Oaths are illegal for minors as well. But don't worry Harry, I believe you and I've already said so to the other judges." Dumbledore assures me.

"Could you announce that to the rest of the school as well? I don't want a repeat of my second year." I ask him and he answers me with a nod.

Five minutes later and the judges decide to pick an additional champion for each school without using the Goblet of Fire. The Headmasters from the other schools head back out into the Great Hall to collect their second champions.

A couple minutes after that Headmaster Karkaroff and Headmistress Maxime come back in to the room with a girl behind each of them. They are introduced as Celine Bellanger and Alexandra Malas from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang respectively. Bellanger and Delacour begin talking to each other immediately while Malas and Krum simply glare at each other.

I make some small talk with Cedric about quidditch and what I'm going to do about the Tournament. I simply tell him that I don't plan on dying anytime soon and that I might as well make the best of a shitty situation. He believes I didn't enter myself, he's a good bloke. Moody informs everyone about his theory that this is a plot to kill me, thank you for being the voice of reason Professor!

* * *

"You are allowed to return to your dorms, tomorrow 11 a.m. the Weighing of the Wands will occur, we'll inform you of the tasks after the ceremony is completed." Dumbledore announces.

As I walk out of the door I see Susan waiting on me with an angry expression on her face, this can't be good.

"Why did you enter yourself Harry! You lied to me, you said you weren't interested in your fame and now you are going to take away Cedric's hard earned attention. You selfish prat!" She shouts at me. She's actually shouting at me, shouldn't my girlfriend believe me? Or at least hear me out before she starts hurling insults at my head? Okay, it's not like this is a serious relationship, I'm simply a hormonal teenager that spend two months listening to Sirius talk about the female body. Anyone would find a girlfriend as fast as possible after the corruption I went through.

"Are you done? Shouldn't you, my girlfriend, give me the benefit of the doubt?" I ask in a cold tone.

"You shouldn't lie to me either! You know what? We're done!" She screeches at me. Teenage romance, it's just as Sirius told me, a couple weeks of snogging and then an overly dramatic break-up.

"Fine by me." As soon as the words leave my mouth she storms off to her common room. I don't really mind, I am not wasting my time on this when there is this tournament hanging above my head. "I'll see you tomorrow Cedric, you don't have to try and convince the Hufflepuffs of my innocence, I want to see her reaction when Dumbledore announces it at dinner tomorrow."

"Yeah sure, see you tomorrow Harry." Cedric says as he walks to his common room.

* * *

I enter the Gryffindor common room and it explodes in a thunderous applause, I can see Ron scowling at me from the stairs. And most of the sixth and seventh years are glaring at me as well, I guess they think I stole their chance at 1000 galleons and 'eternal glory'. I ignore the twins' request for a speech and simply tell them I didn't do it.

"We know Harry, we saw how hard you exerted yourself this afternoon, there is no way you managed to get through before the feast. We'll deal with the jealous 6th and 7th years, you should talk to our dearest brother" They say with that annoying twin speech of theirs, how do they do that?

I mouth 'Room' at Neville and Hermione and head upstairs to confront Ron, this isn't going to be pretty.

"Hi Harry." Ron greets me in an even tone.

"Lo Ron." I return. "I didn't..."

"How did you do it?" He interrupts me. "Did you use the cloak? Or did you use Runes?"

"I didn't enter myself Ron, I told you I am already too busy to deal with this tournament!" He's being a prat about it, Neville and Hermione enter the room but they keep quiet, I appreciate that.

"Right, you are taking your O.W.L., you are duelling professionally and you were going to be the seeker of the interschool quidditch team. Poor Harry Potter, so talented and rich that he's too busy for the rest of us." He shouts at me. "You didn't come to the Burrow this summer, you didn't even come with us to the World Cup! Harry bloody Potter learns some magic and he ignores his friends!" He's breathing heavily now, and he pissed me off.

"I didn't spend the summer with you because this was the first summer in my life that I have a real family. I didn't spend the World Cup with you because that same family got tickets for us to go together. I got my money because my parents died you idiot!" I shout back at him. "And I didn't enter myself in this bloody death-trap, why would I ever do that? I have more than enough gold and I have too much fame as it is! Leave me alone Ron, you're the second person I view as a friend that accuses me of being a cheating, lying, attention seeking celebrity today, I am not in a good mood." Ron storm out of the room before I even finish my sentence.

"Lo mate," Neville starts saying. "You alright?"

"My so called best mate and girlfriend both accused me of entering myself in this deadly tournament. No, I'm not okay." I ignore Hermione's gasp and focus on Neville. "How did Hannah react?"

"About the same as Susan, only a bit worse, she tried to forbid me from talking to you. I broke up with her as soon as those words left her mouth. I knew you didn't do it Harry, everyone who knows you can see that." Good ol' Neville, he's quickly becoming my best mate and I think he'll be better at it than Ron ever was.

"Thanks mate and I'm sorry about Hannah, I'm going to talk to Sirius now. Goodnight."

I lie down in my bed and activate the silencing runes I engraved on the bedposts and call out "Sirius Black" to my two-way mirror.

"Hi Pup, why are you calling?" Sirius' face appears in the mirror.

"My name came out of the Goblet of Fire."

Sirius started rubbing his temples. "It's never easy for you is it Harry? What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know, it's the Weighing of the Wands tomorrow, after that they are going to inform us of the events. Besides that I'm thinking of skipping most of my classes, I'm not obligated to attend them as a champion and I don't have exams at the end of the year. So that means I'm going to be training like crazy, perhaps I'll ask Professor Flitwick to give me duelling training."

"That's probably your best choice, me and Remus will come live at Hogsmeade this school year. We can't help you in the tournament itself but we can train you. I'll come to Hogwarts tomorrow to join you at the Weighing Ceremony, you're still a minor so I'm allowed to join you at all official parts of the tournament."

"Alright, see you tomorrow Padfoot." I say as I turn off the mirror.

* * *

"Mister Potter, how have you been?" Olivander is being his creepy old self again.

I hand him my wand and silently hope that he keeps quiet about it being the brother of Voldemort's wand, I have enough issues as it is. Thank Merlin Sirius was here to stop me from having an interview with that Skeeter woman, she looked at me like I was a juicy steak.

"Holly with a feather of a phoenix, one of my more powerful creations." Olivander casts a spell with my wand and declares my wand to be in perfect condition.

"This concludes the Weighing of the Wands, if the champions can gather around me then we can explain the upcoming tournament events." Bagman announces.

"The first event is the first Duel Week, during this week you can challenge any champion to a duel. There will be one period a day during which you can duel, 11:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m..

"The first five duels will grant the winner a small clue concerning the first major task which will take place on November 24th, each of these clues is unique so having multiple clues will ensure you have a better idea of what you'll be facing during the first task.  
The clues can only be opened at the end of the week but don't think you are guaranteed to have a clue if you win once. If you have a clue and lose a duel then you have to give up your clue to the winner, if you have multiple clues and lose then you only have to give up one.

"If you win 5 duels you will get another clue even if none of your opponents had a clue to take.

"Turning down a challenge is allowed but only if you have already lost at least once against the person who's challenging you. If you are too wounded to duel you won't have to accept either.

"You can only utter a challenge once a day, the week will start tomorrow. Are there any questions?"

"What happens in case of a draw?" I ask

"None of you will lose your clue and you won't get a win on your record." Bagman answers

This actually seems like it could be fun, the only issue is that Delacour is looking at me with a smirk on her face, clearly she remembers me from the 17 and Under. Krum is looking at me with a superior smile on his face. It makes me want to punch him.  
I should be able to defeat Diggory, he's only a sixth year and Hogwarts education isn't catered towards duelling. I don't have a single idea on how good Krum and Malas are but I hope I can at least defeat Bellanger, she's in her seventh year but Beauxbatons isn't duel intensive either.

"Seems like you got your work cut out for you Harry, Delacour is going to wipe the floor with you."

"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence Sirius, I appreciate it." I snort at him. "Thanks for getting Skeeter away from me, Cedric looks like he desperately wants to escape her." I shiver as I think about what she would have done to my innocence.

"You're welcome. Now let's go to an abandoned classroom and we'll start training. You've have been following the schedule me and Remus set up for you, right?"

"Yeah I did, I advanced a bit quicker even, I'm three-quarters through the spell list you gave me and I've been running daily." I answer my godfather.

"Great, let's see if we can give you one more ace in the hole before tomorrow." He says with a smile.

* * *

The reaction to Dumbledore announcing that I didn't enter myself is pretty awesome, Susan looks at me with wide eyes and I give her a cruel smile. If you think you can crawl back into my life then you are sorely mistaken.

Ron turns a new shade of Weasley red and I think Hannah just started crying as she looked at Neville. Serves them right.

As I walk out of the Great Hall and head to my abandoned classroom to practice a bit more before the duels tomorrow I get stopped by Malfoy, his minions and his pug.

"Are you afraid Potter? You know you are going to lose don't you? Every single champion has more experience than you." Malfoy taunts me.

"Malfoy, the only one that is guaranteed to win against me is Delacour. Against the others I've got a decent chance to get a few wins. If you want I can demonstrate by wiping the floor with you, your pug and your minions. I don't mind helping Filch clean the hallway if it means scrubbing your face against the stone." I shoot back. We're gathering quite an audience, of course the twat confronts me in front of the Great Hall, he knows I would make my threats come true otherwise.

The idiot flashes his custom made badges, I've had enough of this, I need my energy for tomorrow.

"Nice badges, who did you pay to make them? It's not like you could do it yourself with your small ferret brain." Neville snorts at my joke and Hermione stifles a laugh behind her hand. Malfoy sputters out some threats concerning his father while he walks away, typical.

"I'll see you tomorrow guys, I'm heading to my practice classroom." I wave Neville and Hermione goodbye and prepare to practice my new spell one more time.

* * *

It's 10:59 a.m. and I am in the Great Hall, just as everyone else that is currently at Hogwarts, I am hoping that Fleur will challenge me first. It will be a loss anyway so I can get everyone to underestimate me. And I won't have to accept Delacour's challenge again after I win a clue myself.

There was this lovely article in the Daily Prophet this morning putting me in a bad light as a weak delusional boy, it works in my favour really. Thank you creepy Skeeter.

11:00 a.m. "I, Fleur Delacour, challenge Harry James Potter to a duel." Thank you Fleur for doing what I want, she also profits from this, the competition won't think anything of her beating me so they won't think she's too good. But that only works if they don't know about her duelling career.

I walk to the duelling platform and get in my circle, we bow to each other and she stares in my eyes with a sultry smile on her lips. Stupid aura, I shake my head and wait on Flitwick to begin this duel.

"Begin!"

One minute later and my wand is in Fleur's hand. I didn't show anything, no raw magic, no lightning, no silent casting and no advanced spells. I can see that my ploy worked, the other champions look at me as if I'm easy prey while the students are holding in their laughs. We'll see who has the last laugh.

Fleur is looking at me with a confused expression, I guess she didn't catch on, I give her a wink and a secretive smile.

"I, Viktor Krum, challenge Harry James Potter to a duel." Alright, let's go.

I stand back on my circle with a cocky smile on my face. Sirius and Remus are watching from the sidelines and they both have the 'You people just got pranked' smile on their faces.

I bow to Krum and he just nods his head, arrogant bastard. Flitwick looks excited, did he guess what I did?

"Begin!"

Time to show the world what I can do. I open with three _Lacero_ curses, advanced cutters, and a _Percutio,_ a piercer, all cast non-verbally. Surprise is written all across his face and he only blocks the cutting curses. His flimsy shield can't resist my piercer and he takes a nasty gash to his thigh.

I'm not stopping here, two _Ossis Effergo_ curses leave my wand. The yellow bone breakers crash into his newly made shield and it's barely holding up. _Reducto_ at his shield, _Ossis Effergo_ at his shin, _Bombarda_ halfway into the platform, banish the debris at him, _Percutio, Percutio_ at either arm, I'm not letting him have a breather.  
He finally casts a strong enough shield to catch his breath but he took a lot of wounds in doing so. He's favouring his left leg, his left arm is pierced through his bicep and he has bruises all across his body from the debris.

He retaliates with a semi dark spell known as the Obsidian Shocker. It's a slow spell but it's painful, really powerful and it's something I want to avoid. I can't safely dodge because he has surrounded the Shocker with other smaller spells, minor pain curses, paralysation curses and piercers.  
I drop on one knee, gather Raw Magic in my left hand and I mould it into the shape of Ýr _(Protection)_ and slap it against the ground. This is the extent of my usage of runes in duels, but it's a really strong shield.

The air in front of me shimmers with power and a translucent half-dome appears. His spells crash uselessly against my barrier which I immediately drop, the downside of my Ýr shield is that my spells are stopped by it as well. I rise from my kneeling position and fire Raw Magic Blasts at him, I wave my wand and four boa constrictors appear. A quick order in Parseltongue, a banishing charm and 4 engorgement charms later and Krum has four 10 meter snakes on his hands. Cutting and piercing curses fly out of my wand as I keep up the pressure. Not even 15 seconds later Krum is bound by one of my snakes with cuts littering his torso.

"Winner, Harry Potter!" Flitwick squeaks excitingly.

I turn towards the stunned crowd and scoff at them. "What did you think was going to happen? I might not show off a lot, but I _am_ Harry Potter." I feel good, I am allowed to be cocky just this once.  
The duels continued after Krum was brought to the infirmary. I wounded him too such a degree that he couldn't continue duelling today, he'll be fine tomorrow.

Cedric duels Celine Belanger and he wins after a lengthy duel. They are both rather good, but I like to believe that I'm better.

Alexandra Malas believes I only lost to Delacour because I wanted to be underestimated, yeah right, as if I would purposely lose. Delacour is better than me, might as well get the most out of my loss.  
The duel between Malas and Delacour is short and sweet and ends with a healthy dose of humiliation for Malas.

"I, Harry James Potter, challenge Celine Belanger to a duel." Hopefully I can win my second clue here. If I do the rest of the week will most likely consist of fighting Diggory, Krum, Malas and Belanger over and over again.

"Begin!"

She opens with a burst of water but a simple _Protego_ takes care of that, I retaliate with _Ossis Effergo_ and two _Percutio_ curses. She dodges the bone breaker and conjures some birds to intercept the piercers. I send a wave of flames at her with _Inardesco_ , it might not be my element but a wall of flames is a great offensive tactic. She counters with an advanced water shield , _Aguamenti Scutum Tholus,_ it summons a dome of water all around her. Okay, I'm sure of it, she has an affinity for water spells, that shield is incredibly hard to pull off, no seventeen year old should be able to do it without an affinity for it.

I fire my Raw Magic banisher at her followed by a bone breaker and two bludgeoning curses, _Vercundus._ I start charging my _Fulgis_ spell, let her try to stop this with a water spell.  
The lightning bolt jumps out of my wand and speeds toward the puddle of water at her feet, why bother to take the risk that she can jump out of the way if she's soaked by the remnants of her water shield and is standing in a puddle?

Her eyes go wide as she notices her mistake, I thought Delacour would have told her about my lightning spells. Ah well, works for me, the smell of burning flesh permeates the air as her screams echo off the walls of the Great Hall. If she didn't have the elemental disadvantage this could have gone entirely different.

"Winner, Harry Potter!" People are looking at me a little warily, I did just hospitalize two people in the same amount of duels so I guess it's understandable. Well, it looks like the first day of Duel Week is over, the results are in my favour. I can deny any challenge from Delacour and I got my hands on two clues. Krum, Malas, Belanger or perhaps Diggory will challenge me tomorrow to try and get one of my clues. If that fails they will probably start fighting amongst themselves trying to get five wins before the week ends. I need to challenge Diggory tomorrow before Delacour does, otherwise there will be three clues out of reach.  
Tactics, what a drag.

* * *

10:59 a.m. 2nd day of Duel Week.

The entire school is gathered in the great hall again, I silently muse as I wait for the seconds to count down. My wand is in my hand, ready to light up and make my challenge as soon as the clock strikes 11.

11:00 a.m.

Got it, I beat Delacour by a second. "I, Harry James Potter, challenge Cedric Diggory to a duel." Let's see how this goes. Diggory is good at conjuration and transfiguration, rather impressive for a sixth year, but his curses lack power. Probably has an affinity for transfiguration, I should be able to match his animals with various snakes, Parseltongue does have its advantages.

I bow to Diggory, my blood is pumping in my veins, adrenaline is coursing through my body. I'm excited!

"Begin!"

I open with 2 overpowered bludgeoning curses, I call that a Giant's Love Tap, they strike his _Contego_ shield with a loud boom and his shield almost breaks right there. He fights back by conjuring rubber balls and firing them at me at high speeds. Those things will hurt and he can use them as transfiguration material, I really need to work on my Vanishing ability.

I fire a _Reducto_ at each ball, a bit crude but effective, I start a spell chain in retaliation trying to break through his defence. As a transfiguration duellist I can expect a never ending supply of solid shields and they require constant fire to break through.

 _Stupefy, Ossis Effergo_ _, Lacero,_ I launch a small part of a chain and Diggory reacts as planned, he sees the red light and instantly throws up a _Contego_ , my overpowered bone breaking curse weakens the shield enough and my cutter breaks through the shield like it's made off paper, hitting him across the chest. Sloppy Diggory.

 _Aguamenti,_ a strong burst of water flies out of my wand and hits Cedric's conjured block of marble, soaking the area around him. That's impressive, conjuring a marble block is slightly after N.E.W.T. level if I listened to Hermione correctly. Time to break it down.  
I gather Raw Magic in my left hand, a lot of it, I compress it in a basketball sized sphere and hurl it at Cedric's defence. As soon as they make contact my sphere violently explodes, showering Diggory with debris. I send a bludgeoning curse flying through the dust, no scream of pain follows it though, damn.

It seems that Cedric was busy while I prepared my attack, 4 wolves are running towards me and stunners are flying above them. The platform is still soaked from my _Aguamenti_ earlier, so a quick _Scintillus Ulcer_ kills every animal running towards me with ease, Cedric vanishes the water surrounding him though. The stunners aren't even worth wasting my time on and I simply slap them away with my duellist shield.

Bone breakers, cutters, piercers and bludgeoning curses, none of them are working, he counters with transfigured animals and makes them intercept every single one of my spells. The animals he sends to attack have to fight my snakes before they can get to me.  
The platform is now covered in animal carcasses, canines and snakes mostly, I need to get creative to beat him because we're in a stalemate.

I use _Aguamenti_ again to conjure a lot of water, but I have no intention of hitting Diggory with it. I simply flood his side of the duel platform and Cedric conjures a block of stone to stand on. It's a good idea but I'm not planning on using the same trick twice in one duel.  
I turn the water into steam with a well aimed _Inardesco_ and Cedric is now covered in a thick blanket of steam. The steam is hot enough to burn his lungs slightly if he inhales it, but that's only an additional benefit. The mean reason for the steam is that it can conduct electricity if it is dense enough, not enough to truly harm someone but it will give someone a painful shock.

I fire a _Fulgis_ into the steam and it lights up like a Yule tree, Cedric probably lost control over his muscles by now. I use _Ventus_ to blow away the steam and I see Diggory on his knees, still twitching a bit from the leftover electricity. I launch a _Stupefy,_ a conjured rope and a snake at his crouching form, he dodges the stunner but the rope and snake both hit him right on his chest, it's over.

"Winner, Harry Potter!"

* * *

I walk to the Headmasters office as I think about the duels today. Delacour challenged Krum and he got his ass handed to him. Krum is a sore loser, he glared at Fleur with such loathing in his eyes it surprised me.

Malas challenged me and lost soundly, she's fairly good at the Dark Arts but my Raw Magic shield protected me against any of her stronger spells and she simply doesn't have enough magical power to throw around Dark Arts spells for a long time. Her duelling style doesn't fit in with her available power, it's a shame.  
This puts me at four wins, which means I only need to win once more to receive my 4th clue. The only problem is that all the competitors besides Delacour can now decline my challenge. I hope that Krum will try to avenge himself by challenging me, otherwise I'll have to decide if I want to duel Delacour at the end of the week or not.

Diggory challenged Malas and won, Krum challenged Belanger and won, Belanger challenged Malas and won easily, Malas was already exhausted at that point.

The score right now is me with 4 wins Delacour with 3 wins, Diggory with two wins, Krum with one win, Belanger with one as well and Malas has zero wins.

I knock on the Headmaster's office door.

"Come in, Harry." I enter his office and surprisingly enough I don't feel as intimidated as the last time.

"What can I do for you Harry?"

"Earlier today I figured out that you are the writer of _"Fundamentals of Affinities"_ and I was wondering if you could help me with my Raw Magic affinity. Shields, Spheres and Blasts are easy but I don't know what else I can use in a real duel."

"I'm afraid I can't help you all that much, the oaths that we judges took are rather strict. But I think I can give you some pointers. The first thing... Ah my oath is blocking me from saying anything detailed. Weapons, multitask , continuous." Dumbledore gasps for breath as if saying those three words hurt him. And with that oath they probably really did.

"Sir, are you alright? Do I need to get Madam Pomfrey?" I ask worriedly.

"I'm alright, don't worry. Did you hear the three words I said?"

"Yes sir, I appreciate it." I really do, multitasking is probably the one I'm going to work on first. So far I've always used spells mainly with a bit of Raw Magic mixed in but never truly at the same time.  
A constant barrage of Raw Magic Blasts while still casting spells should give me a really good edge. I say goodbye to Dumbledore and head out the door, I have something new I need to practice.

* * *

10:59 a.m. 7th day of Duel Week

The week has been rather calm for me, I haven't duelled anyone since the second day, I tried though, I challenged every single champion but they all declined.

Delacour challenged Diggory and Belanger during day 3 and 4 respectively and won, giving her 5 wins and her 3rd clue. No one accepter her challenges after that.  
Diggory managed to get another three wins making his total 5 by challenging Krum daily and winning three times out of four.  
Krum got another three wins as well bringing his total up to four. One was against Diggory, one against Malas and one against Belanger.  
Belanger managed to get two extra wins in giving her a total of three. She won once against Krum and once against Diggory.  
Malas only won once and that was against Belanger.

11:00 a.m. and no one utters a challenge.

I could wait and see if Malas or Belanger will try to win one of my clues, those are the only champions who would gain something out of trying. Diggory won't duel today, he has his clue and he won't lose it to try and gain another one.  
Krum might challenge Malas or Belanger, but those two might not accept either, it's not like they get anything out of it. Maybe he'll make a deal to share his clue with one of them if they accept his challenge and allow him to win. I doubt it though, he's an arrogant bastard.

I really want my fourth clue but the only one that is obligated to accept my challenge is Delacour and although I improved a lot since our last serious duel in August, I still don't think I can take her.

"I, Fleur Delacour, challenge Harry James Potter to a duel." Damn, she makes the choice for me. I feel like I got a good enough grasp on multitasking with my Raw Magic to at least give her a challenge. This is a dumb idea but I really want to do this.

"I accept." Hushes whispers arise around the Great Hall, the spectators correctly assume that this will be the most impressive duel of the week.

* * *

I stand in my circle, wand loosely in my right hand. I've finally mastered a new spell that I've been working on, it should be either a good opener or a good finisher.

I bow to Delacour, I don't even notice her aura anymore.

"Begin!"

My left hand erupts in Raw Magic, I take aim and start firing. Blast after Blast of Raw Magic leaves my hand, every spell she sends at me is intercepted by the Blasts. Time to start casting spells myself, _Lacero, Percutio, Reducto, Ossis Effergo_. I send spell after spell at her, I playing this fully offensive but so is she.

Spells bounce of each other and hit the wards surrounding the platform, exploding curses hit the platform and shower us with debris. It's wild, uncontrolled chaos and I love it.

She sends balls of fire at me with _Accendo_ , I counter by sending Lances of Raw Magic in the fire and then forcing them to expand. Two heavy bludgeoners leave my wand and collide with rubble that Delacour banished in their path. She uses a charm that I have only read about, I'm lucky that specific spell is almost impossible to cast non-verbally otherwise I would lose this duel.

 _"Arcessio!"_ This spell is a nasty one and it shows just how good she is. All the rubble surrounding us starts to tremble before flying at me at high speeds. Only one way to get out of this, I instantly Etch _Ýr(Protection)_ into the floor at my feet. My ward springs up right as the first piece of debris would have hit me. This ward isn't exactly hard to hold but I need to regain my momentum. I can't send anything out and she would have to use a whole lot of power to break through it, a stalemate for now.

Time to use my new flashy curse, the Foe Hammer. I drop my ward and immediately start launching Raw Magic Lances at Delacour. This curse requires a lot of control and even more power but the result is beautiful destruction. It doesn't require finesse, it doesn't require accuracy, it's simply controlled power.

 _"Inilendio!"_ The air in front of me shimmers with power and it blasts out straight in front of me. The floor of the platform is ripped apart as an invisible wall of power heads straight for Fleur Delacour. It takes a big chunk of my reserves to use this spell and I get hit by another cutting curse, but it's worth it.

She uses he _Magus Contego_ shield and just like our duel in August she manages to stop my curse from hitting her. But just barely, her shield has cracks all over and one Lance takes care of it.

We aren't done yet, I keep the pressure up with my limited array of spells. Let's be honest here, I only use bone breakers, cutters, piercers, exploding curses and conjure snake with the occasional lightning spell thrown in the mix.  
Delacour on the other hand sends out waves of transfigured animals, walls of flame and dozens of charms curses that aren't as powerful as my favourite curses but will still end a duel if more than 3 of them hit me at the same time.

I duck under an overpowered cleaning charm and fire three bone breakers. I slap aside a nasty curse that would badly burn my skin where it hit and fire 2 Lances, a cutter and a _Reducto_ at her. We've been going at it for over 5 minutes now, that's a long time for a duel, and we're both starting to tire.

My reserves are a lot bigger than hers but I use more intensive spells, I duck under an overpowered boiling spell, I need to stop thinking about this and focus on the duel! That boiling curse could have been lethal if it hit near my heart or lungs and didn't get treated in time. Let's repay the favour.

I send out a Barrage of Raw Magic, small bullets fly out of my left hand, at least 4 a second. These little things are like muggle bullets but slower and I can control there flying path to a certain degree. I keep sending out cutters and bone breakers as well. My full on attack forces me to take a cutter across my cheek but I'm starting to wear her out. I can see 2 small holes on her arm where my bullets hit her, I'm not faring any better. I have cuts all across my torso and arms and I have a quarter sized hole through my right shin. I keep up the Barrage and now she knows she doesn't want to get hit by those little bullets. It gives me time to gather power and make the correct wand movements for something that will hopefully be my winning spell. I take another cutter to my thigh and it's a deep one, it doesn't matter. My wand and forearm are crackling with lightning and I'm fairly sure my eyes are glowing with power.

 _"Fulmen Tridens!"_ I roar at the top of my lungs, anyone else got a déjà vu moment here?  
Three pronged Lightning jumps out of my wand and heads for Delacour, if she doesn't block this she will have a couple of nasty scars on that flawless skin of hers. There is an entire team of St. Mungo emergency medics waiting for something to go wrong.

She doesn't disappoint, she conjures a wall of marble, damn that's impressive. The wall blows apart under the force of my lightning and she get blown back a few feet by the explosion. Her ears are bleeding because of the noise of the explosion and I'm sure she has some hairline cracks across the bones in her arms that have been caused by the force of the blast. She screams in agony, I might feel bad about it but I won't let my victory get away from me because I don't want to see her get hurt. I am a gentleman after all.

I fire more cutting curses and Blasts at her and she retaliates in kind. I conjure 2 snakes, seems like this is becoming my personal finisher, and banish them at her. _$Bite her! Then bind her right arm to her body!$_.

I'm tiring and I think I'm suffering from blood loss, spots are forming in front of my vision but she is swaying on her feet as well. Just hang in for a while longer! I get hit by a large piece of debris and fall to my knees but it's alright, one of my snakes hits her wand arm and bites it. She drops her wand and my snake binds her arm to her chest. I won, it's over! I take a deep shuddering breath.

My head snaps up and I roll out of the way of a stunning spell. Damn it, she must have wandlessly summoned her wand to her left arm. The poison is in her veins, I only need to hold out for another minute. I start swaying on my feet and I have big black spots all across my vision. She falls to her knees, yes!

* * *

I groan as I wake up, the St. Mungo doctors are patching me up in the Great Hall. Krum is duelling Malas. What happened?

"Harry! You're up!" Neville walks over to me.

"Nev, what happened? Did I win? The last thing I remember is Delacour falling to her knees because of the poison in her veins."

"Ah, well... You kind of took a stunning spell to your face right as she fell down. She couldn't get back up and fainted 4 seconds after you. So the referee declared it a draw."

"Right, the five second rule. So I'm not getting my fourth clue. A shame. What else happened?" I ask him.

"Krum is duelling Malas now, but Malas is throwing the match. They probably made a deal to share the clue." Nev informs me.

"I never thought the arrogant bastard would go for that." I muse.

"Yeah, it was a shocker for everyone. Your clues will become readable after this duel is over, make sure they don't get stolen." He says.

"As soon as I read them I'm going to burn them. No use in letting them lie around for other champions to steal."

"That's probably for the best." Neville nods at my logic.

"Right now I'm going to faint again, I can't feel my legs." I look to my right and give Delacour a tired grin. The last thing I see before I faint is her grinning right back at me.

It may not be friendship, but everyone needs a good rival.

* * *

 **A.N.: And we're done! This was my longest chapter yet. There were a lot of duels, again, but next chapter will be duel free.**

 **Dumbledore tries to help somewhat but the oaths prevent him from really helping him out. Harry doesn't have the map yet, so she doesn't know about Crouch walking around the castle.**

 **We also saw what other people can do with their affinities, was it good? or did I screw things up? How is the tournament? Was the Duel week well executed? Please leave a Review**

 **Let me know :)**


	6. Dragons and a Storm God

**Author's Note:**

 **Hi, it's been a while. Exams and real life caught up to me so I couldn't update up until now. This chapter has been almost ready for 2 weeks but I never had the time to finish it.**

 **Anyway, in this chapter we see some developments. The dragon task is my personal favourite of all the tasks in the books so I kept it the same as it was originally.**

 **I moved the Timeline forward to 201X. That means that Harry is born in 2000 instead of 1980. I did this because I feel more comfortable with writing something in the present than 20 years in the past. In this chapter I made a reference to Naruto and then I realised it wasn't released yet in 1993 and I probably won't be able to refrain from using technology at some point. It will be kept to a minimum but I don't feel like researching when something was invented every time I write about the muggle world.**

 **So yeah, this chapter you'll see the results of 1 and a half year of training. Please keep in mind that while what Harry pulls off is impressive it is by no means strong against wizards, at least not yet.**

 **For anyone who wonders where I got the idea for the second small task, it's from "The Lie I've Lived" by Jbern. It won't be the same, but it's inspired by the puzzle room from his fic.**

 **Don't forget to review, and enjoy.**

* * *

I'm disappointed, I expected the clues to be a riddle or a puzzle. But it seems that they are simple one-word clues. I don't know why but I honestly thought figuring out the clues would be hard.  
I look at the clues again, three scrolls sealed with black wax. The wax is inscribed with a picture of the Goblet of Fire and has multiple runes on it, I guess they are to check if the scroll is real.  
Each one has a single word written on it ' **Fire'** , ' **Creature'** and ' **Retrieve'**. It doesn't tell me all that much, there are a lot of fire related creatures in the magical world. Phoenixes, Salamanders, Dragons, Chimeras, Hellhounds or even the Blast-ended Skrewts that Hagrid is breeding. I'm learning the strongest flame freezing charm that I can find but even they don't offer enough protection against Dragonfire or Chimerafire. I need more information.

"Diggory, wait up!" Diggory only has one clue and with a bit of luck it's not one I already have. A small gamble but it might be worth it.

"Yes Potter?" He turns around to talk to me and his fangirls glare at me. Cute.

"Can I speak with you? Privately?" I give a glare of my own to the horde of girls and turn around after Cedric nods at me. I lead him in an empty classroom.

"I want to propose a trade. Your clue for one of mine." No point in beating around the bush.

"Are three clues not enough to figure out what the task is?"

"I have a good idea but I'd rather be sure." And I would feel horrible if he gets injured because he didn't have enough information. Killing two birds with one stone.

"Alright, do you have your scrolls with you?" He asks.

I nod at him. "They're in this box, it's locked with runes. Have to be careful, you never know when someone's going to steal them. Do you have yours with you?"

"I do, so I just pick out one scroll and give my scroll to you?"

"Yeah," I put some magic in the Naudr _(Lock)_ rune to turn it off and open the box. "Here you go, chose one of them." He chooses my **Fire** scroll, it's probably the best clue that I have. It should help him a lot.

"Here's mine, good luck Harry." I accept the scroll he offers me and quickly look at the wax seal. Correct symbol, the runes are authentic as well, it's real.

"You to Cedric, pleasure doing business with you." I wave at him as he leaves the classroom. Now to open the scroll.

 **'Wings'**

Damn it, that means it's either going to be a dragon or a phoenix. Catching a phoenix seems impossible and fighting one is an act of evil so I'm sure it's going to be a dragon. I really don't want to fight a dragon, the only thing that would really work is a heavy duty lightning spell. But with my constantly growing power it's already difficult to control the weaker lightning spells.

* * *

"Dragons? Are you sure?" Sirius asks me. Sirius and I are eating lunch at the Three Broomsticks while we discuss my latest clue.

"Yeah, what other creature besides a phoenix has wings and is related to fire? So, any ideas on how to get past one?"

"The first thing I can come up with is the Conjunctivitis Curse. The eyes are the most vulnerable part of a dragon after all."

"I don't know, I have to retrieve something from the dragon. Blinding it might help but won't it still smell me? Or just shoot fire in every direction? Do you think Remus might have an idea?" I ask my godfather.

"Perhaps you can somehow bind the dragon, I'm not sure. I'll ask Remus to start researching once I get home."

I say my goodbyes and head back to the castle. My thoughts keep lingering on the dragon I'm supposed to fight. How does one fight a dragon? All the stories that involve dragonslaying are about medieval knights. Or at least the ones that I know off, perhaps I should look for wizarding legends about dragonslaying. They might inspire me.

* * *

It seems that Dragonslaying has been around for a long time, it was even a rite of passage in the magical part of Ancient Greece. The first government of Magical Greece were actually the Olympians from Muggle legends and one of the rites of passage to join them was killing a dragon by yourself.

The good thing is that while dragon scales are resistant to magic they are still vulnerable to the elements and solid items. Stunning a dragon is extremely hard but tossing boulders at one is a good way to damage them. But then again, I don't have to kill the dragon, I just have to distract it and steal something from it. That is of course easier said than done, dragons have a big arsenal of possible weapons. They have razor-sharp claws, a tail that can flatten a human with ease, rows upon rows of deathly teeth and even staying at a distance won't do me much good, their flames can reach their prey from a distance of 100 feet. They only have one ranged attack which means that if I can protect myself from the flames I'll have a big advantage.

I get up from my chair and start looking for a book on fire, if I remember correctly there is a book with every single form of fire in the restricted section. Thank Merlin that I have unrestricted access because I'm part of this bloody tournament. Ah here it is, _So, You're a Pyromaniac?_ by _Hephaestus, 'God of Fire and the Forge'_.

...

 _Fire is Life and Life is Fire. The light of a burning flame is the most beautiful thing in the world. The dance of the fire draws you in and offers you the answers to all your questions._

 _..._

Damn, Olympian or not but Hephaestus seems crazy. The first 17 pages of the book go on about the beauty of fire and how he wishes to join the flames in their eternal dance. Better keep reading and see if this book is actually useful.

...

 _We can divide Magical fire in three categories:_

 _-Blessed fire, also called Divine fire or Light fire. A well known example of this sort of flame is Phoenix fire. These flames often give certain blessings and stand for the healing aspect of fire, the benevolent side which wards of the dark. These flames have the highest temperatures out of all the Magical fires and often burn for a long duration. These flames often only hurt so-called 'Dark Creatures' and are especially effective against the undead. Blessed fire is one of the few counters for the higher ranked Cursed flames and will overtake even the strongest of Cursed flames eventually._

 _-Neutral fire, this fire is often simply called Magical fire. While it still has magical properties it doesn't have any of the radical effects the other two categories have. These flames often burn hotter than muggle flames and some can burn in environments where normal flames wouldn't burn at all, like underwater or in a vacuum. On the other hand there are also Neutral flames that freeze anything they touch or simply do nothing at all. Greek Fire, my own creation, is one of the most known Neutral fires in existence._

 _-Cursed fire, The Dark Flames, The Hungry Flames. These flames represent the all consuming nature of fire. These flames burn at extreme temperatures but are still colder than the Blessed fire. This fire is often rebellious and will lash out at anything within its reach, even the origin of the flames. A lot of these flames will burn anything they touch, a small spark often results in a raging inferno. If you are hit with a high ranked Cursed fire your best choice is to cut off the limb that is hit or use Blessed fire to counter the Cursed flames. Traditional counter spells are made up of long chants and take up too much time. Even if the flame is countered it will still leave horrific scars that will never fade and sometimes there will be blisters on the wound until the victim dies._

 _..._

 _Dragon fire is commonly thought of as a Cursed fire like chimera fire but this is untrue. Dragon fire is a Neutral fire, while it is the hottest Neutral fire and arguably the most dangerous one it is still rather tame compared to the true Cursed flames. A strong enough flame freezing charm will protect you from dragon fire but it requires a lot of power. The flames also die out rather quickly when high-end water charms are applied._

...

What do you know, Hephaestus actually offered some answers! A flame freezing charm and perhaps some runes on my clothes as added protection should take care of the dragon's fire. Now I still have to figure out how to get past it's claws, teeth and tail. Well shit, that's easier said than done isn't it?

* * *

It's 7 a.m., Friday, the 15th of November. Seven days since I found a solution for dragon fire and nine days until the task itself. My flame-freezing charm is coming along nicely, I should have it mastered in three more days. When I'm not working on that charm I'm continuing my dodge training from this summer, not getting hit seems rather important against a dragon. Damn, I need to stop monologuing in my head, it's becoming a bad habit.

"Have you read the new volume yet?"

"No, my mum hasn't owled it yet. Can I read yours if you're done? The cliff hanger in the last one was awful!"

What in the world? I sit up in my bed and discreetly look out of the curtains around my bed. Sweet Merlin, please tell me Seamus and Dean aren't looking at porn mags while they are in the same bed?

"I know! They ended it right when Sasuke whipped out his new, perfect and absolutely massive" Merlin! Dean what the fuck! "Susanoo!" Wait, they aren't talking about porn? Thank you Merlin.

I tiptoe out of my bed and head over to Dean and Seamus.

"Dean, Seamus, what are you talking about?"I whisper to them once I get close enough.

"The newest Naruto Manga volume came out two days ago!" Dean whispers excitedly.  
My face must have shown my confusion because next thing I know Seamus and Dean look as if I just killed a puppy.

"Y-You don't know about our lord and saviour Naruto? The Chosen One? The One destined to bring peace to the Elemental Nations?" Seamus stutters out. I am fairly sure there is something ironic about him saying that to me but I can't say why.

"Nope, what's Manga anyway?" Both Seamus and Dean gain a manic glint in their eyes and suddenly procure hundreds upon hundreds of pocket sized novels from ... somewhere. I should have stayed in bed.

This is awesome! Well, not the manga, okay the manga is pretty great to. But these little books give me so many ideas! A lightning blade around my arm, boosting my neurons with electricity, forming a Raw Magic Rasengan, or forming a dense magical construct around me that moves with just a thought. My own Susanoo! This is my solution to the first task!

Flame freezing charm, runes on my clothes, Susanoo ribcage for protection and a Susanoo arm to simply take what I need to steal by force! This is going to be amazing!

* * *

This is so fucking irritating! Learning how to form the actual ribcage only took a couple of hours but the ribcage like it is shown in the manga doesn't offer any protection. I don't even know why I thought that would work in the first place. Having ten ribs floating in front of you with a big space right in the middle doesn't do much against accurate attacks. While it stops big things like boulders with ease, it's completely useless against smaller projectiles. And the tip of a dragon's tail might just fit in between the gaps. So that means I have to try and bring forth the entire torso and let's not forget the arm that I need to steal the objective! Come to think of it, perhaps I need both arms, one to hold down the dragon and one to steal the objective.

* * *

"Eugh, anyone got model of the broom that hit me?" I groan as I wake up. I blink a couple of times and confirm that I am not in my own bed.

"Mister Potter, glad that you could rejoin us in the land of the living." Madam Pomfrey says as she pulls away the blinds around my bed. The light! It burns! Okay, I'm exaggerating but still! Light isn't fun!

"What time is it?" I ask once I no longer feel as if my eyes are liquidizing.

"It's 9:30 a.m., Thursday if you were curious." Okay, that means I've only been asleep for 16 hours, not too bad. Still got three whole days until the task and right before I collapsed I was already practicing forming the torso and arms within a respectable time limit. Three minutes of slowly building it up takes too long. Wait, hang on, rewind that one. I collapsed, why?

"Why am I here? Last thing I remember I was practicing for the tournament."

"You had a minor case of magical exhaustion. And if you combine that with your physical fatigue and sleep deprivation it's a small miracle you didn't sleep until noon." Huh, I must have been pushing myself harder than I thought. Forming the Susanoo takes a lot of magic but maintaining it is fairly easy. I should experiment on how many times I can form it without having any negative consequences.

"Am I free to go? I feel fine." I really do, having a good night's rest is a miracle cure.

"You're free to go but be careful Potter. If you push yourself further than what you did yesterday you might miss the first task because of magical exhaustion." Madame Pomfrey warns me.

* * *

"Once more Sirius! Make it bigger this time!" Me and Sirius are practicing in an abandoned classroom. Well, I'm standing still within my Susanoo and Sirius is conjuring boulders and then banishing them at me. I can't say my Susanoo is impenetrable but if I reinforce the area that is about to be hit then I got a solid defence against physical objects and some minor spells. We haven't tested Susanoo's durability against more powerful spells yet simply because if it doesn't protect me as well as I hope then I'm screwed.

"Damn Harry! That thing is holding up rather well isn't it?!" Sirius shouts at me and I agree with him. We've been doing this for over 30 minutes now and while there are cracks all over the torso it is still stopping every boulder thrown at me.

*CRASH*

Another boulder smashes into the middle of my Susanoo's ribcage but this time it has enough force to make a dent in the torso. A spiderweb crack forms all over the front side of Susanoo, I guess that's enough for today.

"Alright Harry, that's enough! Let's grab some dinner and then you're heading to bed. You need to be well rested for the task tomorrow." Sirius calls out to me.

"Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing. No reason to exhaust myself before the big event." I suddenly start chuckling. "Can you imagine the crowd's reaction when I reveal this? It's going to be glorious!"

"I'll make sure to set up a camera to take some pictures." Sirius snickers as he walks past me.

"Make sure that you do. Try to focus on Karkaroff and Krum's faces. See you tomorrow Sirius."

"Goodnight Prongslet." He ruffles my hair and heads toward the nearest secret passage to Hogsmeade.

"Night Padfoot."

I enter my bedroom with a content smile on my face. I am confident in my ability to get past the dragon, I spend time with my godfather, I had a good meal and above everything else Nev and I just watched Draco being reduced to a drooling mess by Fleur. Not to mention we had a great view of her ass.

"Are you going to amaze the public tomorrow Potter?" A sarcastic voice interrupts my thoughts. And there goes my good mood. I am so not up for this shit.

"Yes Ronald, that's exactly what I am going to do. I am going to show how amazing I am to the entire wizard world once more. Once I am done tomorrow I'll have girls throwing themselves at my feet! Even more than I do now!" Let him try find a comeback on that. I like Ron, I really do. He stuck by me for three year, he was my first friend and we had a lot of adventures together. But Merlin's saggy nutsack, he's starting to undo all of that.

"G'night Nev, Seamus, Dean, Ronald." I just call him Ronald to piss him off.

* * *

Merlin, I'm stressed out. The suspense is killing me. Sitting in the Champions' tent waiting for Bagman to show up is getting on my nerves. Even looking at Bellanger and Delacour isn't relaxing me. And they are beautiful French girls! Look at those curves, they both have a beautiful hourglass figure but Bellanger's black hair clashes perfectly with the silvery blonde locks of Delacour. If it wasn't for the black hair then Bellanger could have passed for a Veela as well! They really do make quite the pair, don't they? Wait, what was I nervous about again?

"Welcome champions! Is everybody excited about today?" Bagman questions as he enters the tent.  
Right, dragons. Big fire breathing lizards that I'm going to try and fight with an experimental piece of magic. Why wouldn't I be excited.

"As you may have figured out with the help of your hard-won clues, you are going to fight a dragon today! The goal of this task is to steal the golden egg from a nesting mother dragon! But be careful, breaking the real eggs will cost you points! The egg has the instructions for the next minor task in it." Bagman explains enthusiastically. It seems that everyone figured out the first task, no one shows any surprise on their faces. Actually having instructions for once seems rather nice.

Wait. Did he just say 'Nesting mothers'? Oh shit. Like stealing something from a dragon wasn't hard enough. It has to be a nesting mother, they are a lot more aggressive and possessive than any other dragon. Bloody hell.

"Now, let's see which champion has to outwit which dragon! Ladies first, just grab hold of a figurine." Bagman holds out a pouch as he says this.  
Fleur goes first and pulls out a miniature dragon, a Norwegian Ridgeback if I remember correctly. One of the more dangerous dragons. larger than average at 35 feet and that's without its tail. It has average reach with its flames but its tail is dangerous. If the tail is angled right then it can cut through a human with ease and there are sharp ridges across the entire back of the dragon.  
Malas is next and selects the Chinese Fireball, average length at 25 feet but since this dragon is more serpentine than any other dragon this includes the tail. The tail itself isn't dangerous but its flames reach further than any other species.  
Bellanger is last and it seems as if the stress is getting to her. Her hands are shaking and her face turns ashen as she selects her dragon. The Welsh Green, lucky girl. It is one of the smaller breeds, it's 18 feet long on average, excluding the tail, and the most docile one. Not that it matters how docile it is, a dragon is still a dragon and having eggs will make even the most docile of dragons aggressive.

"Alright, now for the boys. Here you go Harry, youngest first."

I put my hand in the pouch and feel around for a second. Three more dragons but I can't make out any details from just touching them. Alright, here we go.

The Ukrainian Ironbelly... fuck. It's the largest species in the world, it has a height of 60 feet on average. That's more than three times the length of the Welsh Green with its 18 feet! But while most dragons move on four limbs this one is bipedal. Most dragons have two legs and use their wings as forward limbs while the Welsh Green has four legs and the Chinese fireball is basically a snake with two legs in the middle. The Ironbelly on the other hand stands on two legs, and has two shorter arms not unlike a kangaroo, it towers over basically every creature in the magical world. It's more than twice as tall as a giant. Its tail alone is longer than the Welsh Green, it's 30 feet on average. I'm going to need a big Susanoo to compete with that.

Cedric is up next and selects the Swedish Short Snout. A dangerous species, a little bit smaller than average at 22 feet, excluding its tail, but it's still a really dangerous dragon. An agile flyer but the real danger is its flames. It's the only known dragon species that breaths blue flames and they are extremely hot.  
Krum is the last one to pick a dragon and takes out the Hungarian Horntail. Ouch, the Horntail is arguably the most dangerous dragon in the world. Standing at an impressive length of 50 feet, excluding the tail, it's one of the largest creatures in the magical world. A fast and agile flyer, accurate and hot flames with higher than average reach and a truly terrifying tail. The only redeeming factor is that this dragon isn't bipedal, it walks on the legs and its wings to support itself.

"We'll start with the smallest dragon and work our way up from there. So the order is : Celine Bellanger, Cedric Diggory, Alexandra Malas, Fleur Delacour, Victor Krum and last, but not least, Harry Potter. Celine, you have five minutes to prepare yourself. Good luck everyone!" Ludo says as he walks out the tent.

I guess they're saving the best for last? Or they simply think that whoever goes against the Ironbelly is going to end up as a smear on the ground and they don't feel like cleaning up in between rounds. I'm going with the first option.  
I look around the tent, Celine is understandably freaking out while Fleur is trying to comfort her. Cedric seems to be going over his strategy once more or he's praying, I'm not sure. Krum is brooding in a corner and Alexandra seems to be meditating. To be honest, Celine has it easy. I'm fairly sure she has an affinity for water spells and the Welsh Green should be fairly easy to subdue with some powerful water spells.

"Celine Bellanger? It's time." An assistant informs her. Damn, 'it's time'? Can you even be more dramatic? Anyway, Celine goes out of the tent and now we're all waiting for Bagman to begin his commentary. Fleur seems rather tense, I think it's more for Celine than for herself. Fleur can take care of herself. Come to think of it, I haven't actually spoken to Fleur. Sure, we've duelled and we formed a sort of rivalry but we haven't actually been properly introduced. Hmm, how should I handle this? Should I go and distract her from her worries right now or should I allow her to focus on her friend? Damn, this is hard. I'll talk to her after her friend completes the task, at least if Celine doesn't get hurt because that wouldn't be very tactful.

"And Celine Bellanger walks out of the arena with her egg 10 minutes and 34 seconds after she started. Give her another round of applause." It's over already? I really wasn't paying attention.

 **"For her spectacular display of water magic used for both offence and defence the judges grant Miss Bellanger 38 points! There will now be a five minute break before Cedric Diggory will take on the Swedish Short Snout!"** Bagman's amplified voice booms through the tent. Thirty-eight points, pretty good, that's almost an average of 8 points.

I walk up to Fleur, I'm just going to start a conversation, introducing myself would be rather awkward. She glances at me as I stand beside her. Great, at least she won't get a jump scare because I suddenly appear out of nowhere.  
"It seems that she did rather well, her water spells must be brilliant." I start off.

"Hmm? Oh, yes they are her speciality, the way she controls the water is truly beautiful." She answers me.

"Yeah, I noticed that during the duel I had with her, that water shield she used was perfect. If I wasn't as good with lightning spells I would have lost that duel. Do you feel confident about facing the Norwegian Ridgeback?"

"I do, if I had drawn the Horntail I might have had a problem, it's to vicious for my plan to fully work on. What about you?" She asks.

"I would have preferred any other dragon to be honest. The fact that it's bipedal makes my plan a lot harder, not to mention the fact that it's stupidly big." I answers her honestly.

"You would have preferred the Horntail?" She asks incredulously . "I won't deny that the Ironbelly is dangerous but the Horntail is almost the same size and its fire and tail are a lot more dangerous. Why would you prefer to fight the most dangerous breed of them all?"

I shrug. "The Horntail stays low to the ground." I figure she must have given up on trying to figure out what I'm going to do as she just stares at me for a moment before continuing as if nothing is wrong.

"It seems your fellow school champion is doing rather well." Oh, Cedric is fighting his Short Snout. I listen to the commentary for a moment so find out what he's doing. It seems that he's using transfigurations, probably trying to distract it.

"Pretty predictable that he's using transfigurations, it was his strong suit during the duels." I tell her.

"That's true, I guess the same can be said for Celine. The only time she really shone during the duels was when she used her water spells. If you hadn't already talked about how you would prefer the Horntail then I would think you would talk to your dragon." My incredulous stare prompts her to elaborate. "You know, with Parseltongue, a dragon is a serpentine creature isn't it?"

"You're joking aren't you?" I suddenly realise.

She lets out a melodious laugh. "Of course I am! You should have seen your face! You believed it to be possible for a second didn't you!?"

I scowl at her. I did in fact think it was possible for a split second but then I remembered all the books I read about dragons and the common misconceptions humans have about them.

"Your expression says it all Harry. Listen, they are giving Diggory his score."

 **"Cedric Diggory showed his talent at transfigurations and got his egg in 9 minutes and 47 seconds. He did suffer some burns however and that cost him some points. His total is 36 points!"**

"That seems fair, he's almost a minute faster than Celine but his wounds put him two points below her." I mention to Fleur.

We sink into a companionable silence as we listen to the commentary for Alexandra Malas. She did rather well with a combination of Transfiguration and some curses. She took longer than the other competitors with her 12 minutes 28 seconds but still got 37 points for some reason.

"Good luck Fleur." I offer her a smile as she walks out of the tent.

* * *

 **"Fleur Delacour shows her prodigious talent in Charms and puts a dragon to sleep with a charm that is considered well above N.E.W.T. level. She managed to get her egg in just 7 minutes and 58 seconds with no injuries what so ever. For this we give her 41 points!"** That's rather low, I expected her to have a higher score with that performance.

* * *

 **"Krum certainly put up a show for us! His accurate and powerful conjunctivitis curse combined with a perfectly executed thunderclap curse rendered his dragon temporarily blind and deaf. To finish it he burned a transfigured cow to confuse the Horntail's sense of smell. But the pain from the thunderclap and conjunctivitis curse made the dragon stomp on her eggs which cost Krum some points. He got his egg in 9 minutes and 7 seconds. We grant him a total of 40 points!"**

* * *

"Mister Potter, it's your turn." I take a deep breath and stand up.

"It's showtime." I whisper to myself. I dig into my magical reservoir and start pulling on my magic. I feel the familiar flow of magic running through my veins as I walk out of the tent. My Susanoo will have to be at least 40 feet, preferably larger. My normal Susanoo is only 20 feet and while I have big enough magic reserves to make a bigger one it will still hurt a lot to force that much magic through my body in one go. I guess you can say that while my reservoir has enough water in it, my pipes can only have a smaller amount of water running through them before they burst.

I walk through the gate and see the Ironbelly standing in the distance. I pull harder on my magic and I can feel the strain of having so much magic running through my veins. I'm fairly sure that my eyes are faintly glowing with the colour of my Raw Magic, dark purple.  
I need to get closer to the dragon, my Susanoo should have enough physical strength but it is completely immobile since I haven't tried forming its legs.

 _"Glaciem Fluunt Ignem Frigidum"_ I cast my flame freezing charm and activate the runic array I put on my clothes and pull my hood up to protect my face. Ýr _(Protection)_ / Kaen _(Fire)_ / Isa _(Ice, Cold),_ protection from flames through ice and cold. This combination should protect me from all non-magical fires.

I pull on even more magic as I get closer to my target. The Ironbelly finally notices me and immediately sends out a stream of fire at me. Unlike every other fire I've tried this out on I can actually feel the heat now, it's like sitting in the sun on a really hot day in a tropical area. Unpleasant, but not even remotely dangerous.  
I'm close enough now, if I don't hurry it will swipe its tail at me and that's something I don't want. I close my eyes and let go of my magic.

 _ **"SUSANOO!"**_ I yell out as raw magic explodes around me. I don't have to actually say 'Susanoo' but it wouldn't feel right if I didn't. A dark purple torso starts to take shape around me, I can just imagine how badass I look right now. I keep feeding magic into my construct, I'm starting to feel the burn, it's like I've been playing Quidditch for a couple of hours. I feel the Ironbelly's tail bouncing of the already formed torso. Now for the arms.

I open my eyes as I finish my Susanoo. I actually did it, my Susanoo is 50 feet tall, just 10 feet shy from the enormous Ironbelly. I don't allow myself to bask in the glory of actually pulling this off and immediately send forward my right arm and grab the Ironbelly by the neck. I pull back my arm, or rather my Susanoo's arm, and drag the dragon with me. This hurts so fucking much, I can feel the strain in my own arm as if I'm physically pulling the dragon myself. I pull the dragon close to me and slam my left fist into its side and start pushing it out of the way. It's not like I'm actually harming it, just moving it. With an almighty push I get the Ironbelly away from its nest, I keep my right hand around its throat as it tries to get me off. But it's no use, I grabbed him high enough so that it can't bite me and the pressure around its throat keep him from spewing flames at me. The only way it could get out right now was if it would try to fly.

Fuck, it's trying to fly, it can't get very high because of its chains but my reach isn't all that big either.  
I abandon my attempt to get the golden egg with my left arm, I can't reach it and keep the Ironbelly down at the same time with just one arm. I use my left arm and grab hold of the dragon's right wing to keep it grounded. This is starting to look like a wrestling match. The dragon's wings are too strong, of course they are, they can keep this six ton beast in the air, I should have thought of that. It's starting to get off the ground albeit very slowly, I need to act fast. I slam my left fist into the part that connects the wing to the body and it seems that I hit a soft spot. The dragon lets out a load roar of pain as my fist connects so I hit the same spot again.. and again... and again. After the fourth hit the dragon stops trying to fly so I quickly use my left hand to make a grab at the eggs.

I close my hand around the eggs just as the Ironbelly breaks free from my hold. Damn, it takes one look at my left hand and sees that I have my hand on her eggs and lunges at me. I bring up my right arm to defend myself but in its wild fury it manages to bring forth cracks along my arm. I close my fist loosely around the eggs so that I don't break them and use my left forearm to strike at the point that connects the wing to the body once more, I guess that's its shoulder?. The mother dragon lets out another roar but this time it sends torrent after torrent of hot flames straight at the middle of my Susanoo's torso. I keep slamming my left forearm into the shoulder of the dragon while I bring my right hand back to the dragon's throat. The dragon is now close enough to use its smaller arms to scratch my Susanoo's torso and it's carving deep trenches in it. I'm lucky it doesn't realise that it should aim lower to actually hurt me, right now it's a strain to keep my Susanoo together but I'm not suffering any wounds.

My hand closes around the dragon's throat and I squeeze as hard as I can. I can't apply enough force to choke it but I can push it off me. I reposition my left arm so that my forearm pushes against the dragon's torso. I give a final push and manage to get it off me, I place the eggs behind Susanoo's body. I should have planned something to escape because right now I'm just improvising. I hollow out the bottom of the Susanoo, it will collapse soon but this allows me to move around. I sprint towards the back of my Susanoo while trying to keep up the construct. I make a hole at the back of my Susanoo and sprint out picking up the golden egg on my way. My construct is already falling apart, it requires almost all of my concentration and as soon as I'm not in it, it collapses.

I run as fast as I can while I reapply my flame freezing charm just in case. _"Glaciem Fluunt Ignem Frigidum."_ Not even 5 seconds after I applied the charm I feel the dragon's fire washing over me. I take a quick look back and see that the Ironbelly is fitfully struggling against its chains. I slow down as I realise that I'm out of danger, I turn around fully and allow myself to take in the cheers of the crowd.

 **"Unbelievable! Potter managed to get his egg in just 7 minutes and 19 seconds! Without damaging any of the eggs or even getting a wound!"** Bagman shouts out over the cheers of the crowd.

* * *

I listen to Neville and Hermione retelling the task from their perspective as Madam Pomfrey runs a mandatory scan.

"When you yelled out 'Susanoo' Dean and Seamus went completely crazy! They looked at you as if you were Merlin reincarnated." Neville tells me excitedly.

"That was some very impressive magic Harry. I mean, you told us you were trying to make a construct out of raw magic but I thought it would simply be a tentacle or perhaps a long arm. But this was just so impressive, you simply have to let me study it!" Hermione says with a hopeful glint in her eyes.

Before I can answer Madam Pomfrey interrupts us. "There you go Potter. Nothing wrong with you besides an overtaxed magical system but that is to be expected after that display of magic. Don't cast any spells within the next hour and try to keep casting to a minimum for the next 24 hours."

"Alright thanks Madam Pomfrey." I turn around as the judges shoot up their scores.  
I got a 10 from Dumbledore, a 10 from Bagman, a 10 from Headmistress Maxime, another 10 from Crouch and a 5 from Karkaroff? What the hell?

"A five?! Is he serious?" I ask incredulously while looking at Neville.

Neville nods. "He's been giving everyone lower points than they deserve besides his own champions. It's disgusting that he gets away with it."

 **"Harry Potter lives up to his hype of the Boy Who Lived and shows us an incredible piece of magic! An enormous 50 feet tall humanoid torso made out of raw magic dominated his dragon in a display of pure power! He suffered no injuries, didn't damage any of the eggs and finished in a record time of 7 minutes and 19 seconds! For this performance we award him 45 points!"** Bagman announces.

"Don't worry about Karkaroff, you still got first place. You showed to all your naysayers that even if you didn't join the tournament willingly you are still a dangerous player." Hermione points out.

I smile thankfully at Hermione but just as I'm about to answer Ron stumbles into the medical tent.  
Wow, didn't saw that on coming.

"Harry, I... want to apologize. I was a prat, I should have believed you about the tournament. You have never lied to me and I should have stood by you. It's just hard for me to stand in someone's shadow, first my brothers and now you. And then you get chosen by the Goblet and I just couldn't take it anymore." Ron says honestly.

"I appreciate that you are being honest Ron, but it isn't just about the tournament. It's about the fact that you complained about my O.W.L., about the fact that you complained that I didn't come to the Burrow this year and about the fact that you were mad that I went to the World Cup with Sirius and not with you. I am not going to fold myself to your expectations Ron. I now have a family and other things to do besides being locked up in my room at the Dursleys and it looks like you can't deal with that. You are my first friend Ron and you'll probably always remain a good friend but I don't think you can continue being my best friend. Sorry mate." Damn, that was emotionally exhausting.

Ron nods sadly. "I understand, congratulations on first place. You deserved full points. See you later Harry." He turns around to leave.

"Ron, didn't I just tell you that you'll probably always be my friend? So get back in here and join the celebrations!" I smile at him and beckon him over, it feels good to have him back.

* * *

We walk into the common room and it explodes with applause and cheering. The muggleborns and half-bloods that know about Naruto are going absolutely crazy

"Here he is"

"The Giant of Gryffindor"

"The Dragon Wrestler"

"Merlin's Reincarnation

"Harry Bloody Potter!" The cheering only gets louder as the Weasley Twins finish their little speech.

"C'mon Harry, open the instructions for the next task!" Seamus encourages me.

"Alright, calm down." I unshrink the golden egg and tap the top with my wand. As soon as my wand makes contact the top half of the egg opens just like a flower blooms.

A booming voice comes out of the egg.

" **Greeting Champion! The next minor task is an important one. The winner of this task will get a detailed clue for the next major task in March while the other champions will have to duel once more for inferior one-word clues.**

 **"Many Wizards and Witches can control the elements. Be it fire, water, earth, wind or lightning, but only a few select Wizard and Witches can match the pure power that Nature has at its beck and call. In this next task you will do exactly that! You have to get past different forces of nature but you won't do it with pure power, no this is a test of the mind! The explosive power of a volcano, the unpredictability of wind, the stubbornness of earth, the fluidity of water and the devastating power of lightning. You will have to face each and every one of these without your wand or wandless magic but any self enchanted objects are allowed.**

 **"The specifics are on the blueprints inside the egg. Good luck!"**

"Damn Harry, good luck with that, you'll need it!" Fred and George say at the same time and I can't help but agree. I know how volatile the elements can be and without my raw magic or wand I'll have some major issues with it.

* * *

 **AN: So yeah, the second minor task ( the first was Duel week) will be a puzzle room against the elements. Enchanting objects, making golems, making objects with runes on them to pass through the elements and all that will be used to get past this task.**

 **Susanoo: Right now it's just a big immobile golem with average strength. It can't choke the dragon and neither can it break its bones. It is rather useless against wizards since Harry can't use other magic while in his Susanoo and the wizard can just apparate out of reach and start using shield breakers or unforgivables if he's fighting Death Eaters. It will improve and it will become a trump card eventually but other wizards and Voldemort will also have trump cards. Every Wizard has affinities and this includes Voldemort so you'll see him using more than just Avada Kedavra and other Dark Spells, he'll actually have a rather cool speciality.**

 **Optional Reading, consider this an extract from a book that I didn't put in the Fic itself.**

 _ **...**_

 _ **Magical strength is an often discussed point in our society. Is magical strength set at birth or can rigorous training improve someone's magical capacity?**_

 _ **Wizard and Witches have argued about this point for centuries and ,rather unexpectedly, both sides are correct.**_

 _ **The Magical 'Core' of a Wizard, Witch and any other magical creature is set at birth. The core is the amount of magic a Magical Being has in his or her body when fully rested. Over the years our society has become rather proficient at predicting the strength of a magical being. We can predict the strength of a core with great accuracy. The actual strength of a core deviates to a maximum of 20% from our prediction.  
These values are expressed on the Emrys scale. **_

_**The Magical 'Network' of a Magical Being can be trained. The network is the pipes that bring the magic out of our core and through our body. These coils can only transport so much magic at once. Even if a Wizard has a big enough core to use an intensive spell it might still fail and hurt the caster if his coils aren't wide enough. The pipes will 'burst' if too much magic is forced through the system at once.  
Using magic often will widen these coils and can allow a well trained Wizard or Witch to use more intensive spells than a poorly trained Sorcerer or even Warlock.**_

 _ **Magical 'Control' is an often overlooked factor in Magical Strength but it's important as well.  
Young wizards and witches often have poor control over their magic, this is what results in accidental magic. Most wizard think that obtaining a wand negates these control issues but they are wrong. **_

_**If you put too much magic in a spell, the spell will either have amplified effects or there will be no change at all. An overpowered Avada Kedavra will have the same effects as a normal one. The only spells that have a amplified effect when used with more magic than normal are those that have a more powerful variant. The householding boiling charm can be overpowered to create similar effects to the blood boiling curse, a bone breaker can become a bone shatter or exploding curse, a Reducto can become a Bombarda and there are many other examples.**_

 _ **Poor control will often result in bad stamina, putting too much magic in transfigurations won't reduce the quality of the transfiguration but it will tire you out that much quicker. A Wizard or Witch with perfect control will never waste a single drop of magic while a Mage with poor control will bleed magic in the air with every spell cast. This will create a rather spectacular but ultimately useless effect The only signs of power that a strong magical being with great control shows are glowing eyes and a slight breeze when unleashing his or her power. A great example of this is Albus Dumbledore. While he has a weaker magical core and a less developed Network than Voldemort, he was still able to fight him to a standstill because Dumbledore has perfect control.**_

 _ **...**_

 **Now why is this important? This is why Harry will tire out quicker than Lucius Malfoy, Sirius Black, Bellatrix, Filius Fltiwick and countless other wizards, sorcerers and warlocks. He doesn't have the control or Network to win against adults right now even if he does have a core larger than some of his adult opponents.**

 **See you soon, hopefully :)**


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